


By a Single Thread

by dimpleforyourthoughts



Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Anxiety, Barebacking, Bullying, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, Hurt Jared Padalecki, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Memory Alteration, Minor Character Death, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:10:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 76,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimpleforyourthoughts/pseuds/dimpleforyourthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Jensen Ackles is a renowned neuro-psychologist and pioneer surgeon in the field known as Mind Mapping, a procedure that involves entering a coma patient's mindscape and sifting through their memories and trauma to help the patient wake up from the coma. It’s a complex procedure that requires strict rules and no lingering remnants of the visit. But while working with his current patient—Jared Padalecki, male, 24, attempted suicide--Jensen discovers he’s in too deep. He’s formed a dangerous emotional attachment to Jared that could have devastating consequences. He finds himself in the difficult situation of risking his own mind and sense of self by losing himself in Jared. But the more memories he visits, and the more he gets to know Jared, the more Jensen realizes how important it is that he save Jared’s life, whether it costs Jensen his identity or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dedicated to and inspired by all my friends and readers involved in or repping the J'S ‘Always Keep Fighting’ campaign; your courage and grace under fire never ceases to amaze me, so this one’s for you guys.
> 
>  
> 
> [listen soundtrack for the story here](http://dimpled-sammy.livejournal.com/13619.html)
> 
>  
> 
> As always, I'm Amy. Come say hi on [tumblr!](http://www.dimpleforyourthoughts.tumblr.com). I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

 

 

_ _

 

_\--_

_“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”  
–J.K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_

\--  
  
It starts like the simple act of falling asleep‒ always has, always will. Eyes closed, space dark for that one pregnant moment of shutting them. A brief and terrible second, when the entire world is quiet, when the entire world is night, practically vacuous in its vast space. The silence of a blank mind is deafening; he can only hear the beating of his heart a million miles away, the rush of blood in his ears, even further than that, for bodies and blood and beats were left somewhere between eyes open and eyes closed. It starts like falling asleep; putting trust in the laws of circadian rhythm and darkness and quiet and waiting.  
  
And waiting.  
  
What once took him hours now takes him minutes, the sound rushing up to him prematurely, almost like he’d been expecting that telltale flit and flutter of wings. Even in the silent black with no one watching, he grins; he barely had to wait at all this time.  
  
An image—the detached appendage of a larger thought—appears and he lunges for it, scrabbling for purchase in the dark, well-practiced fingers snatching it by the very tip and yanking it close to his chest. Cradling it against his skin, seeking sensation, the cells of him throb for recognition, for connection.  
  
_Wet nose_. The last thought the patient most likely had, cold and damp, nudging against the higher part of his left cheekbone, and he can hear—he strains his ears—a high pitched whining noise, a frantic and high keening—  
  
_Dog_. He leapfrogs on top of the next thought, fingers curling around empty air but he feels silky hair, a warmer and smaller body leaned against his calf now, below rather than above him, pushing her forehead into his—  
  
_Sadie_. The third thought hits and with it comes a crashing wave of worry, filling his lungs up with thick paint and he inhales, trying to breathe, letting in the wayward concerns of whether the patient’s German shepherd has enough food and if she’s being taken care of since he had to give her away to the shelter. The emotion is necessary, and he lets himself feel it, though it is not his to feel. It’s the only way to get further down the rabbit hole.  
  
One thought connects to the next, Sadie leading to dog food leading to PetSmart leading to an empty bank account, dots along the grid that he follows further and further down, Ariadne’s string going straight into the labyrinth. The darkness grows impossibly darker, but he follows the thoughts, flitting from one image to the next. The sound of wings, of rustling paper airplanes drifting in a directionless breeze, grows louder and louder, and he grabs them all, searching for the right thought, the right piece of information. The thoughts pelt at his skin, and he sifts through the shreds of paper, those errant and detached thoughts. He just needs the name, a shred of an identity to give the patient. He allows the discarded thoughts to latch onto his skin like tar, clinging to his pores and absorbing into his bloodstream like alcohol, making him woozy as the connections become faster, synapses firing. He can’t give in just yet, he needs, he  _needs_...  
  
There. He’s got it. High school diploma. Mr. Jared Tristan Padalecki. There. He grins again in the black, and then he surrenders, gives in to a bliss that pulls him down, down,  _down_  like slumber.  
  
_Jared_ , he calls into the endless night. He shouts it, really, as the pull turns into a fall. “Jared. Jared!”  
  
The floor beneath his feet drops like the trigger of a trap door, and he plummets straight into the memory, barely seconds to brace himself for the impact of—  
  
This floor cushions his fall, and he lands on the balls of his feet, cat-like, staring out into a giant maze, a towering height that reaches to a ceiling he can’t even make out. The shape or the size, the amount of memory hidden within the walls, does not matter. He’s got to find the patient.  
  
In the dim light of the maze, he can also see his Thread wrapped loosely around his wrist, the soft ivory glow of it a comfort, knowing reality is a scant few inches away from his grasp should he need to call upon it. Not that he will need to. This is a low risk case, perfectly healthy male patient; shouldn’t be too long.  
  
Time to call up the patient, assess the damage, and bring the both of them out.  
  
“Jared.” His name bounces up into the endless space, disintegrating through the walls on either side of him. He calls as loud as he can, mind searching, but it’s pretty clear by the lack of response that the patient is lost somewhere among the maze, unaware that they need to be found.  
  
Alright. He steels himself. Re-group. Research. Grab a memory, any memory, do research, find the patient’s Center. Sniff the clues until he finds the culprit. That’s all it takes.  
  
Time passes haplessly here, and if someone weren’t watching the clock, he’d have no clue how long he’s been down here; wouldn’t know whether hours or weeks or months have passed.  
  
The maze is tall‒ they always are‒ walls stretching up to a dark ceiling that he can’t make out, an ethereal quality to the glass that looks liquid, like melted cellophane. This mind is quiet, as most patients’ in comas are, but up ahead he can hear a voice, accompanied by the same whispering jostle of thoughts. He plunges ahead into the maze, rounding corners, searching out that memory. The glow of the screen at the end of the corridor is warm as he gets closer, and he can almost feel it as he sees it: a little boy in his backyard playing in the sandbox‒ one would assume a Mr. Jared Tristan Padalecki, circa twenty something years ago.  
  
The closer he gets to that cellophane, the more sensation prickles at his fingertips, as to be expected. Coarse, wet mud, gritting underneath his fingernails, cool over his skin.  
  
The little boy has his fists full of dirt, and is digging deeper and deeper into what appears to be an ever deepening mud hole in his backyard, sun turning the tips of his hair blonde. Chubby arms, chubbier cheeks, smudges and cuts that speak to the kind of mess that only a kid can find themselves in, accidental and unfounded. A Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirt is smeared with mud and what looks like the remnants of macaroni and cheese.  
  
From what he can gain from this memory, it’s not enough to help him find the patient—Jared’s—Center. He’ll have to double back around the other side of the maze, look for another memory, some other clue. This memory is too young to hold any significance, and too close to the outer reaches of the mind to hold weight, as memories on the outer edges of the maze often are.  
  
Somewhere in the dark of the maze, amongst the soft glow of celluloid memory reels, lies the key to finding his way to the real Jared, the one that he has to save. He’s just about ready to trek into that dark but stops when he feels his pace quicken, and he knows in an instant that if it’s not his own fear he’s feeling it’s—  
  
The boy is staring at him, hands still in the mud pile, suspended behind a wall of glass, suspended in a memory that’s untouchable, where he should only and has only ever been the distant spectator.  
  
“Who are you?” The boy asks, staring right at him, head cocked to the side.  
  
There’s a tinkling crash as the glass between him and the boy shatters, melting down to liquid as it falls to the ground. He sucks in a breath as the memory rushes for him in an oncoming flood, but even as he braces for the impact he can feel more than see the light bursting overhead, the ceiling he’d seen before he’d closed his eyes eons ago fading back into vision. The lights are bright and someone is yelling, forcing sensations of wet nose and dog and Sadie and the pair of inquisitive eyes from his fingertips.  
  
And Jensen wakes up.  
  
\--  
  
The interns are in chaos when Jensen comes to. Maybe that was to be expected.  
  
“Where the hell have you  _been_?” Chad shrieks, voice pitched high with absolute panic, and he’s not the only one. From what it sounds like, everyone in the lab is wigging. Jensen can feel a cold stethoscope being shoved against his chest, small and deft fingers tracing seeking his pulse, a light being shined in both eyes to check pupil function. He’s aware of all these things, but he’s barely got enough energy to open up his mouth to speak. He feels like he’s having a heart attack, a panic attack, something.  
  
“Oh my god.” Chad is continually pacing up and down the room trying to check Jensen’s vitals but his hands are shaking. “Oh my fucking god, oh my _fucking god_.”  
  
“Shut the fuck up, Murray,” Genevieve says tersely, but even her tone is shaky at best.  
  
“Pulse has gone haywire,” Chad reads off the monitors, “Maybe we should book an ER or—“  
  
“You two. Calm yourselves and get it together. No,” Jensen snaps, and though it comes out in a rasp, it still serves its purpose: the interns still.  
  
Jensen lifts his head slowly, glaring. “Shit does happen, but above all else you need to keep a clear head. Even if something goes wrong or abnormal. You’re two are supposed to be the leading mind mapping experts in the country apart from me. That means complete control over your emotions in a crisis. Don’t you ever forget that.”  
  
Rattled, two terrified looking interns nod back. Jensen should feel compassion, but he can’t think past the sensation of mud caked on his hands, of sun on the back of his neck, that’s lingering far longer than it should. Besides, the mind mappers are young, but no younger than Jensen was when he started this. This being his second group of apprentices, there is no room for error here. He can afford to be harsh, because they can’t afford to be panicking. Not like this.  
  
“Now, assess the situation. Check mine and the patient’s vitals. Make a diagnosis from there.”  
  
Genevieve’s fingers are pushing up under his throat once more, probably checking to see if his glands are swollen, another light sweeps over his pupil, a few more perfunctory tests to make sure he’s truly okay, and then they’re on him, questions swapping back and forth a mile a minute, each one louder than the next. He can barely distinguish between their overlapping cadences because in his head echoes, in that curious young voice,  _who are you? Who are you? Who are you?_  
  
“What the fuck happened in there?”  
  
_Who are you?_  
  
“You said you were just going in for a diagnostic procedure, to find the initial patient—“  
  
_Who are you?_  
  
“What did you see? Were you locked out?”  
  
_Who are you?_  
  
“His BP is still pretty high, guys, maybe we should—“  
  
Jensen sits up, removing the electrodes from his skull and glaring at everyone, head suddenly and viciously pounding. “Murray, coffee, black, no sugar. And order food for all of us at the cafeteria, charge it to my tab. Cortese, take the patient back to the care unit for the time being. I want the activity charts, stat, and schedule me an MRI and I swear to god above if you poke me with that stethoscope again—“  
  
“Sorry, sir. You were gone longer than expected.” Genevieve steps back, assisting him with the removal the electrodes on his chest monitoring his heart. “And then something happened at the end and…well, we just got a bit worried.”  
  
“How much longer than expected?”  
  
“Uh…fifteen minutes, sir.”  
  
Shit. No wonder his head hurt like a bitch; the patient had all but kicked him out, and he’d been under too long. A diagnostic mapping was supposed to take an hour, and not a second more. Even so much as a minute under extra could exhaust him exponentially, and Jensen had been down there for fifteen of those extra minutes. That’s stupid, sloppy work, especially for him, who should be used to this sort of thing by now. Time may seem meaningless while inside a mind, but timing was everything; was the very slight difference between a saved life and a lost cause.  
  
But then again, ‘this sort of thing’ definitely did not apply to what just happened in that patient’s mind, Jensen realizes, thinking warily of the little boy whose eyes seem burned into his skull.  
  
Disturbing as the notion is, Jensen takes the wariness and folds it in half, then again, and again, till it’s condensed into a neat little index card that he slots along next to the other pressing concerns in his head. There is not a single thing he prides himself more on than the ability to stay calm in a crisis, shove all feeling and primary need to the back of the filing cabinet while dealing with everything else first hand. It’s taken him years to do it, so the interns, who have been with him for nine, maybe ten months tops, are absolute basket cases in the sense that they are so inexperienced.  
  
“Why didn’t you Call me? You were head doctor on this assignment, were you not?”  
  
“With all due respect sir, we were going to, had the tone aimed and read and then…something happened.”  
  
“What something?”  
  
“Your brain lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree on the monitors, sir,” Genevieve finishes perfunctorily.  
  
Jensen flashes back briefly to the cellophane melting down, the walls crashing around him, the little boy staring straight at him, like he could see him, like Jensen was really  _there_ , not just a spectator to a repeating film reel.  
  
“This is going to be a trickier patient than we thought. Who gave me the debriefing?”  
  
“That would be Murray, sir.”  
  
“ _MURRAY_!” Jensen roars down the hallway after Chad’s cafeteria-directed form, trying to keep calm, but his brain wheels are churning away happily at the possibility of this, the danger of this. Murray, Chad Michael comes skidding around the corner. “Sir?”  
  
“You told me this was standard procedure, kid.”  
  
“It was sir! I double and triple checked the charts.” Chad snatches up the chart again, flipping through them, reading in a short, succinct tone, “Suicide attempt, jumped off the rooftop of his apartment building in Downtown Seattle about six weeks ago. Patient has since undergone surgery for a fractured skull, right arm, and three intercostal ribs, and a whole lot of internal bleeding. Guys a fucking fighter,” Chad blinks surprise out of his expression, looking impressed, and continues “But he’s been in a coma ever since. Jared Padalecki. Age twenty-four, male. They managed to get his name and information from the landlord; no past history of mental illness, no personality disorders or autism, and a young healthy age. A perfect candidate.”  
  
“Minus the suicide, Murray.”  
  
“Sir?”  
  
Jensen barely has the energy to move but he motions for a towel, which Genevieve hands him as he hoists himself out of the tub, dripping water onto the floor. He blots off the odd mixture of chlorine and saline and focuses on those sensations immediate and recognizable, the towel moving over his skin, the cold shivers from being wet, and then speaks.  
  
“Why would a patient who tried to kill themselves be a trickier patient to mind map for?”  
  
Blank stares greet him again. They weren’t expecting to be put on the spot so quickly after an emergency. Jensen has to resist rolling his eyes until Genevieve speaks up.  
  
“A patient that killed themselves wanted to be dead, so doesn’t want to be found, doesn’t want to come back, doesn’t want to wake up. As far as his concern goes, he’s dead, and he wants to stay that way, right?”  
  
“That’s right. So what’s the assessment from here?”  
  
“Special Circumstance case,” Chad blurts before Genevieve can, and Jensen does not miss the dark glare she sends his way, “The patient is highly sensitive and highly volatile, more likely to attack and defend its own mind, and more likely to have extremely intense emotions.”  
  
“And what does that mean for us?”  
  
“It means we have to proceed with caution.” Gen beats Chad to the answer. “The patient’s mind isn’t just unknowingly sleeping. It’s a minefield in there. The patient wanted to die. So it’s likely he will fight like hell to not wake up, whether his subconscious is aware of doing it or not.”  
  
“Good.” Jensen responds, toweling down his hair and shaking chemicals from his right ear. “Very good.”  
  
There’s a pause as he watches Genevieve and Chad size each other up. It’s been six months in the program and they still have yet to take to each other, something he isn’t sure is caused more by Chad’s innate ability to insult anyone he’s talking to without even trying, or Genevieve’s cool exterior that generally fends off anyone trying to get close. The inevitable spat and throwdown has yet to actually happen, but Jensen’s sure that if he gives them enough competitive arenas, it’ll happen soon enough. It was part of the job description, working in such close proximity. Really, Jensen just needed them to get over their differences before it seriously messed with the program.  
  
Gen turns away with a roll of her eyes and Chad grins, apparently triumphant in whatever mini-standoff Jensen had just witnessed, and they look at him expectantly.  
  
“So,” Murray shifts from foot to foot like a restless animal in its cage, “Who gets the patient?”  
  
Normally, Dr. Ackles would assign in no time flat: his interns need firsthand experience, and they’ve been learning at a breakneck pace, surprising him time and time again. Genevieve was the most balanced, quick on her feet and even quicker in her head. And Chad….well, suffice to say Chad was a wildcard that always managed to turn out brilliant results and intelligent insight by the skin of his teeth each time. Dr. Ackles would make the call. Dr. Ackles  _should_  make the call.  
  
But Jensen thinks about the little boy with his hands in the mud, and it’s Jensen that says, “I’m going to be taking this case. I think the patient is too volatile for us to handle, and I think all of you are—as demonstrated—are nowhere near ready enough to stay calm if there’s a crisis inside the mind.”  
  
The pair of them open their mouths to protest but Jensen holds up a hand, beating them to it.  
  
“Go home, team. That’s enough for today.”  
  
There is some morose shuffling about the lab, the sound of wires being detached as they prepare to wheel the patient back to the ICU. Jensen doesn’t normally glance at patients, as their outward appearance means nothing to him in the long run, but he does look at Jared Tristan Padalecki.  
  
Chad was right. You don’t throw yourself off a building onto solid concrete and make it out without being an absolute survivor. He doesn’t look like one now, though. The mop of chestnut hair Jensen saw in the mind is now shaved off, the patient’s head wrapped in a bandage. The wide eyes Jensen saw as well are gone too, dark circles beneath that drop off into long lashes. He’s pale as death, despite the natural nut brown of his skin. It’s strange to compartmentalize with what Jensen just witnessed inside his head.  
  
There’s a moment where Jensen wonders if the kid will open his eyes just like he did in his head, but then the doors slip shut and he’s out of the room, moving further and further away from Jensen.  
  
“Cortese.” Jensen watches the retreating hospital bed as Genevieve steps back from the herd.  
  
“Yes, Dr. Ackles?”  
  
“Nice thinking on your feet in there. That was good.”  
  
Jensen likes Genevieve: she has all the nervous energy and eagerness of any efficient intern, but what he likes best is her voice. There is something about the way she speaks, slow and thought out, that soothes Jensen. Her mind is intuitive, and that’s a skill that can’t be taught in Med School, that raw knack for knowing how to handle a crisis situation. She’s going to be a natural at this, that he knows. Genevieve had passed all the mental exams thus far with flying colors. However, while her emotional control far surpassed that of the rest of the interns, she still cared for people immensely, whether she’d admit it or not. If it were any other branch of medicine she was practicing, this would be considered an asset. But caring wasn’t protocol for this particular procedure, but it was alright. Genevieve would learn, just as Jensen did.  
  
“Thank you, sir. Oh, and sir?”  
  
“Yes, Cortese?”  
  
“I took the liberty of setting up an appointment with Dr. Morgan for you tomorrow before your interview with the University Journal. He’ll be expecting you.”  
  
“I don’t need to see Dr. Morgan.”  
  
“With all due respect sir, too damn bad.” Genevieve ducks her head in what Jensen suspects is as much of an apology as he’s gonna get. “You were under an extra quarter of an hour. Even when Murray and I are a single second over time you make us go to therapy. I already texted Dr. Morgan to let him know to keep his office open until you came along. He’ll be expecting you.”  
  
She knows. Jensen doesn’t know how, but he knows that she knows something had happened down there, whether he’d been triggered or compromised, she didn’t ask. But she does expect him to take care of himself. Jensen’s warmed by that fact.  
  
“Fine,” he says grudgingly, “I’ll go before my interview.”  
  
“Oh, and, sir?” She turns one last time, messy bun flopping on the back of her head.  
  
“Yes, Cortese?”  
  
“I’ll know if you skip seeing Jeff. Don’t even try lying to me about it, alright?”  
  
She levels him with a fiery gaze, and Jensen knows he’s going to do as she says, even though all he wants is to get right back into that tub and plunge right back into that kid’s mind. But then he thinks of the darkness, of the paint filling his lungs with worry, of the little boy who broke every rule Jensen’s ever known in his years of doing this procedure.  
  
There’s a kid trapped in his own mind, and its Jensen’s job to help him get out. But Jensen can’t do his job if he doesn’t take care of himself. The patients are important, but Jensen knows above all else that the mind mapper’s sanity is what comes absolute first and foremost. He’d learned that the hard way.  
  
“Yes,  _Mom,_ ” Jensen says sarcastically, but Gen smiles anyhow, satisfied enough, and walks out the doorway, leaving Jensen to stare at the procedure basin and wonder exactly what just happened.  
  
\--  
  
The reporter looks startled to see him when he enters the room. But then, they always do. The kid—he can’t be more than twenty-five—starts to rise, then wavers, awkwardly crouching in a position that’s half seated, half levitating mid-air, like he doesn’t know which direction to go until Jensen allows him permission. Taking pity, Jensen gestures for the kid to sit, lips twitching as the kid practically collapses in his seat in relief, before recovering, straightening his tie and his sweater vest, before clicking on his recording device and holding out a shaking hand as Jensen finally makes his way over to him.  
  
“Dr. Ackles, it’s such a pleasure--” the kid stutters.  
  
“Please, call me Jensen,” Jensen smiles, holding out a hand. The kid looks like he’s going to pass out.  
  
He can tell, almost instantly, that the kid wasn’t properly prepped for the interview by his assistant. And that’s alright. Jensen rarely makes public appearances as it is, with the exception of pre-recorded lectures sent to medical conferences and the occasional board meeting. Little is known about medical genius Dr. Jensen Ackles, PhD in Neuro-Psychology, and Jensen prefers to keep it that way.  
  
Not out of shame, but rather to keep everyone from staring and feeling embarrassed when they have to ask, “What happened?”  
  
“Jensen. Okay.” The kid—his name badge reads  _Brock_ —visibly sweats. “Well, Jensen, my name is Brock Kelly, and I’m with the newspaper over at the medical school—“  
  
“I know the drill, Brock,” Jensen says kindly. “Every year I do an interview with my alma mater. Of course, I’m happy to answer whatever questions you have. Though you may want to make it quick, in case I get called away for a procedure.”  
  
Brock’s mouth pops open and then closes with a snap. “Right. Right. Okay, um--“ he furiously leafs through what looks like an entire notepad of questions, and Jensen can’t help but feel nostalgic to be a med student again, absolutely clawing to get approval from superiors.  
  
“Dr. Ackles—Jensen--It’s been five years since you pioneered a groundbreaking medical procedure that has saved literally hundreds of lives. That’s got to feel pretty good, yes?”  
  
Jensen smiles politely. “Pretty fantastic, I’ve got to say.”  
  
“They’re saying this is might be one of the greatest pioneering procedures since the discovery of penicillin, do you believe that?”  
  
“Well, I’m not exactly curing cancer here, Brock. I think my science is a bit simpler than that.”  
  
“Don’t be modest, Dr. Ackles, mind mapping is all anyone talks about these days. Thousands of patients are being put on a waitlist to come out here and be worked on; med students are scrambling to get into your teaching program. You’re a legend.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t miss the way Brock’s eyes flicker downwards, the briefest glance at Jensen’s chair, but then they’re back up again, glowing with adoration.  
  
“Thank you. But, I swear, I didn’t go into this thinking it’d be anything but a fluke. Off the record, it was just me messing around in an empty lab with narcotics and monitors.”  
  
That startles a laugh out of the kid, and Jensen sees the imperceptible loosening of his posture.  
  
“But, honestly Dr. Ackles, you’ve overcome incredible odds. The loss of your wife, may she rest in peace, the loss of your first intern class. I mean, even after losing your—“  
  
“I am perfectly aware of what I have lost, Brock.” Jensen responds coolly, the corners of his mouth turning downward. “But I’ve always believed that perseverance and control always breed success. My losses are inconsequential to my success, I assure you.”  
  
Brock looks like he’s about to burst a vessel, muttering out a hasty apology and flipping back through his notes.  
  
“So, uh, it’s been five years. Your teaching branch within the hospital is growing, and it’s predicted that within the next five years, other hospitals will be able to begin doing the mind mapping procedure as well. But we all know the science. We’ve all read your research. What’s one thing that mind mapping hopefuls should know about the procedure? What’s your secret sauce?”  
  
The secret sauce. Jensen’s lips twitch, though not in enjoyment this time. He rubs at his chin, drags a hand over a five o'clock shadow that he really does need to get rid of. When was the last time he properly groomed? Sometimes it’s hard to remember, since he spends so much time in the hospital. Last night had barely allotted him three hours of sleep; he’d spent most of his ‘rest’ reading through all the latest psych journals. He had slept as he always does: black, dreamless, but even at that it hadn’t been enough.  
  
“To be completely honest, Brock, there’s only one secret that’s kept me alive, and my students alive, these past five years. For most doctors the secret is knowledge. The secret is knowing as much as there is to know, and practicing that knowledge with precision in both the operating room and all other aspects of one’s career. For most doctors, the difference between saving a life and losing one is knowing what cut to make and where, what symptoms to recognize, what medication to prescribe.”  
  
“You’re saying that’s not what mind mappers do?”  
  
Jensen shakes his head ruefully. “For us, the difference between saving a life and losing one is complete and absolute control. Control over one’s emotions, control over one’s mind. There’s a reason I only take on a few interns a year among hundreds of applicants, Brock, and that is because, statistically speaking, the human body is a reactive, emotional thing. The memories that are thrust upon us are all connected, and constant. You are under a constant onslaught of one’s experiences, traumas, joys, and sorrows. And though it’s not an open heart surgery, it can be extremely excruciating and exhausting. My students aren’t good doctors because they’re the smartest. They’re the most disciplined in the medical profession. They know not to let emotions get involved; they assess a situation, and whatever comes at them, whatever they see and absorb, they have complete control over. Without that control, mind mapping is essentially a useless procedure, which means that the patient would—.”  
  
Insistent buzzing in Jensen’s pocket leads to the discovery of his pager: PROCEDURE IN ROOM 212, ONE HOUR, YOU BETTER EAT BEFOREHAND.—G.  
  
“I’m so sorry to cut you short, Brock, but the operating room is calling.”  
  
Brock begins doing half-sitting and half-standing dance again, stuttering his way through his thank yous, so Jensen stops and says, “You can ask, you know.”  
  
“What do you mean—“ Brock’s eyes slide along the floor, flicking up to Jensen’s seat again.  
  
“How does one of the greatest doctors in medical history get his work done in a wheelchair?” Jensen doesn’t ask the rhetorical question cruelly, because he knows that Brock is more likely humiliated by this conversation than Jensen himself is.  
  
Brock sputters, trying to cover his tracks, “I mean—statistically speaking—you demand that your students be in both top mental  _and_  physical condition, so if something goes wrong during the procedure their body’s own defense systems can kick in and keep them alive—“  
  
“Do you really want to know the answer, Brock?”  
  
Brock stands, now taller than Jensen, shaking his head vigorously. Jensen smiles. “You’ll be eligible to apply to the program come next spring. Get some good recommendation letters in and you may just make it in to get the answer to your question.”  
  
And Jensen wheels out of the room, chair gliding across the linoleum, only a little bit sorry for leaving the kid hanging.  
  
\--  
  
The second time around, Jensen is prepared for the plunge straight into the memory, but that preparation doesn’t knock the wind out of him any less. It hits him like a solid wall, forcing any sense of identity from Jensen’s DNA, reshaping and conforming to him until he’s immersed in it.  
  
The memory tastes like mud, and naturally Jensen inhales a mouthful of it, along with sunlight and unstifled curiosity clenching in the boy’s small chest with the force of an iron fist.  
  
He can smell and feel everything, and it rolls over him not in waves, but in a waterfall, constant and battering at his shoulders, over his head, forcing him to take in the smells of spring and sea fog. Watching a memory allows a mind mapper secondary experience, sort of like smelling a pie baking from the other side of a house. But being  _in_  the memory, standing on this beach, is akin to standing in that goddamn oven with the goddamn pie, four hundred degrees Fahrenheit, apple crisp boiling and cooking right along his skin. But, the only way to work one’s way through the maze of the mind and get to the Center, is to replay the memories, and wade your way through.  
  
Jensen feels everything, including the flavor of macaroni and cheese bursting on the delicate buds of the tip of his tongue, rich and salty and soft. It’d been cooked too long in the boiling hot water the boy’s mother had been stirring just a half hour ago, hand balanced on hip as she gabbed on the phone, and the boy watched her balefully from the kitchen table, waiting to be given permission to go outside. He feels the perennial prick of sunburn. Smells the ocean like he’s inhaling the salt water, feels the warring curiosity and fear of the smaller body like he’s being punched with it.  
  
“Who are you?” The boy asks, a retake of their interaction for the second time.  
  
The boy stares at him, just as before, fingers curling in the mud like he’s cowering slightly into it. And why shouldn’t he; Jensen’s a thirty year old man of more than six feet, of course he’s terrifying.  
  
But no matter, the force of the memory rolling along each pore of his body forces change, molding his form like play-do and he can feel his body become smaller, become younger, feeling an adult frame sink down to smaller bones and tighter vocal chords, making him into roughly the same age as the boy he knows he’s meeting again. Jensen rolls with it; it’s all he can think to do while keeping his wits about him.  
  
“I’m Jensen.” Jensen grows down slowly to the boy’s eye level, trying to appear as unintimidating as possible. Even at an estimated appearance of a six year old, Jensen is very clearly bigger than Jared.  
  
“That’s a funny name.” The boy shakes his head, dark blonde curls of hair flecking mud. His eyes are wide and curious, and he just stares for all he’s worth. And Jensen knows, without hope, that the boy can see him, that the boy is aware of him.  
  
“Jesen,” the boy says seriously, lifting a colossal pile of mud and pond scum in his small hands, “Hold this.”  
  
Simultaneously baffled and intrigued, Jensen holds out his waiting hands, and the boy slaps the mud pie right into them. And Jensen feels it, the slippery mud, the oozing cool trickling over the backs of his hands, his wrists. He can feel the sun on the back of his neck and he can feel, ever pressing, the little boy staring at him.  
  
This isn’t possible, Jensen thinks, staring at the wet earth in his hands, this should not be possible.  
  
“Jared!” Jensen feels more than hears the ripple of fear that shudders over the little boys frame as a woman nudges open the screen door, “You better not be playing in the rain puddles again!”  
  
Guilt colors in after the fear, sweet and apologetic, like syrup. “No, Mommy,” the little boy says, and Jensen laughs despite himself at the sudden feigned innocence.  
  
Jensen waits for the woman to turn away, but her eyes snag on Jensen, too. And she smiles. And Jensen may look like a child but he’s thinking a mile a minute, trying to possibly understand how this could happen. “Oh, you must be with the new family who just moved down the block. What’s your name?”  
  
“His name is Jesen!” Jared chirps, throwing his hands up and sending mud flying with a sharp  _thwap_  into Jensen’s face.  
  
Jared’s mother does scowl now. “Jared! I said. No. Mud! Look what you’ve done to that poor boy’s face!”  
  
Jared, five years old and nineteen years away from his own attempted suicide, turns to Jensen with a wide and toothy grin, and laughs, the loud unleashed cackle of a child that’s never known anything but unadulterated happiness in their life.  
  
Mrs. Padalecki, still with her eyes  _locked_  on Jensen, still apologizing profusely, heads back in the house to grab a towel to help Jensen clean up, and Jared resumes playing in the mud pile.  
  
Logically speaking, the most interaction two minds can have is surface level sensation and thought processing. He can see a patient’s memories, experience them firsthand, but always as a spectator, not as an active participant.  
  
What the fuck was going on?  
  
“Jesen.” Jared’s entire demeanor is muddier than ever, but he’s smiling shyly, looking up at Jensen--still standing awkwardly several feet away--with wide and almost reverent eyes. “Jesen, will you stay and play with me? Please? Please stay?”  
  
Jared holds out another squelching two handfuls of mud.  
  
This is, so to speak, where Jensen should turn back. This is uncharted territory that, despite his years and experience, even Jensen doesn’t know how to navigate. He’s never had a patient pick him out of a memory and see him, speak with him. He’s never felt such a sharp unbridled sense of identification and empathy with a patient. The unfamiliarity sets an unease in the pit of Jensen’s sixth sense that tells him to simply determine the patient impossible to cure and walk straight out of this mind and find a patient that  _can_  be helped. Because something’s telling him this one can’t.  
  
Jensen is just about to do just that, trigger his Call in order to make a timely exit when he feels it, a whisper soft thought, woven into the very stitching of this memory, the pleading and open hope for instant friendships that only the innocent feel. It’s Jared’s thought, a thought that is directed at Jensen, thought  _for_  Jensen, as if Jensen’s actually a part of this memory. As if Jensen is actually there.  
  
It’s like seeing, at last, through the eye of the needle, right into the Center he’s seeking out.  
  
Jared, whoever he was when he killed himself, was not always that way. There was a boy that wanted a friend. That ate macaroni and cheese, and adored playing in the mud. There was innocence to him, happiness to him, which means that there’s a point in this maze where it all went wrong.  
  
If Jensen can just find that turning point, maybe Jared’s not so bad off after all.  
  
“Sure, Jared,” Jensen says softly, plopping himself right down into the mud, bumping shoulders like they’re already friends, “Of course I’ll play with you.”  
  
The mud slaps down into Jensen’s palms with the force of a thunderclap that fizzles out into another whisper, and Jensen can feel the walls of the maze fading back into spectrum, the drug slipping along his veins and rolling over in his system like a sleeping giant, and the whispered words  _Jesen, will you play with me? Please?_  repeating in his head like a nonstop chorus, sweet like affection and salty like macaroni and cheese on his tongue.  
  
And the memory changes.  
  
He’s aware of the memory changing, and Jared’s only just touched his hands. They’re outside an office, the words ‘James Beaver, Divorce Attorney’ printed across a glass pane. The office is large, furnished with enough wood stained furniture to easily represent an entire dead forest. Jensen’s feet dangle off the chair he’s seated in, but Jared’s push slowly across the tiled floor under their chairs.  
  
“They’ve been in there forever,” Jared says dully, and already Jensen can sense the further length of Jared’s hair, the loss of baby fat around his face and knees, tasting spearmint gum that lost its flavor hours ago, feeling the sudden tighter structure surrounding Jared’s teeth—braces, probably.  
  
Jensen stares at the engraving on the front door again, the stark black print of ‘Divorce Attorney,’ and realizes he doesn’t have to ask who has been in there forever.  
  
“Are you okay?” Jensen asks, puffing his chest out and breathing out a thirteen year old kid, rather than the scrawny five year-old he was moments ago.  
  
Jared huffs out a breath, irritated, but he won’t look at Jensen, and Jensen can sense the tightening of his chest cavity, the ache in the back of his mouth swallowing back a flood of tears.  
  
“Hey,” Jensen says, thinking frantically, scrambling for something to stop the bubbling cauldron beneath Jared’s apathetic surface. Jared’s hands are asleep from where he’s jammed them under his thighs. Jensen assumes they’ve been sitting together for over an hour. “Do you want to get out of here?”  
  
Jared raises his head, an awkward moue of lips struggling to cover the braces he’s clearly so embarrassed of. It would be a smile, if it didn’t look so pained.  
  
Ventura is a weird compaction of breezy cold and baked heat in the summer time, and when they hit the pavement, humidity pools in Jensen’s follicles like a cold sweat. Jared’s flip flops slap as the sidewalk turns to boardwalk turns to sand and they take in rocky beaches and murky teal oceans, cold even in the summer sun.  
  
Jared balls himself a bit further into his hoodie, plops himself right on the sand, and shoves his toes underneath it like that alone will warm him up.  
  
“They hate me,” Jared says after a moment, curling a bit more in on himself, “Ever since Megan. It’s never been the same. Jeff knows it, took off as fast as he fucking could.” Jensen blanches at the swear word, it sounds odd coming from the mouth of a kid who’s sweater drops past his bony wrists, hides the shape of his slender shoulders beneath its bulk.  
  
“Megan...”  
  
“They blame me, you know.” The sun is high in the sky but Jared’s face is dark. “And they’ll never admit it but they do. I fucked up everything. The marriage. The family. I did it.”  
  
Jensen feels the whiplash of emotion push against his frame, trying to understand how the happy and hopeful kid became this brooding angry teenager, stuck in divorce attorney offices and wondering exactly who was supposed to love him.  
  
“It’s not your fault, Ja—“  
  
“They used to take me to the park, together. They’d hold both my hands between them; Dad would push Megan in the pram with his free hand. Jeff walked ahead because he was too cool for that, but we were happy just the same. We used to do things together. Stories before bedtime, camping trips on weekends.” Jared blinks, staring up at the sun as if willing it to evaporate the wetness straight from his eyes. “But I can barely remember it now. I can’t remember my parents ever loving me.”  
  
Jensen feels like he’s walked in on something he wasn’t supposed to hear, but Jared’s speaking to him as if he knows all the details: past, present, and future.  
  
Jared further jabs his feet into the sand, curling and flexing, the coarse grains pressing between his toes.  
  
“What do you think they do with bodies they find?”  
  
“They?”  
  
“Like. People and stuff. Police. Just random bodies with no grave, bodies that don’t belong to anyone. Do you ever think about that?”  
  
Jensen shrugs. “I don’t really like to think about being dead, Jared.”  
  
“Are you afraid of dying?”  
  
He thinks about that answer, really and truly thinks, and it’s not required for Jensen to give actual thought to the question but Jensen supposes that—if the time came—he wouldn’t much care whether death was coming for him or not. But that didn’t feel like he was simply unafraid of it.  
  
He evades, instead, “Aren’t you?”  
  
Jared shrugs. “I think about it, sometimes. How I slept an entire night by Megan’s side, and I didn’t know she was gone. How going into the funeral made my mother sick to her stomach, but I just walked right in. Death isn’t scary to me, the idea of it. I think it’s the dying that I can’t wrap my head around.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“They always told me it was fast for Megan, just like they told me it was easy for Grandpa Ray, and Aunt Julie. I suppose that’s how I would want to go, quickly, you know? But then I think about it, I think about this life, and I realize, we’re still dying. It’s just slower, the happiness and the life leaking out of us the older we get, the light and love leaving our eyes. It happened to my parents, it’ll probably happen to Jeff.”  
  
Jared stares out at the steadily lapping waves. “Sometimes think it’s happening to me too.”  
  
“You’re not dying, Jared,” Jensen spits, the flare of panic taking both of them surprise, and Jared jumps. He takes a breath, nostrils flaring ignoring the threat in his tone, steadying himself to a calmer tone. “You’re alive, and you’ve got your whole life in front of you. No dying on me, okay?”  
  
It’s meant with levity, that last bit, but Jared doesn’t smile at the reassurance, just blinks at Jensen in this slow, careful way, like there’s a million thoughts churning away in his head but no way, no how is he going to reveal them to Jensen.  
  
“Sometimes I want to,” Jared says, softer now, and he’s blinking at the sun again, but Jensen doesn’t miss the tears that leak over the curve of his cheekbones, chasing towards the drop off into the sand. “Sometimes I think it’d be easier.”  
  
There’s no violent sadness or decision in that statement, just fact, like Jared’s not really considering the weight of those words or what they imply, but just saying them, which provokes Jensen to think so impulsively that he knows, inveterately, that his next words will possibly alter everything that’s already happened in what feels like the span of five minutes, two memories, and seven years.  
  
“Hey, listen.” Jensen doesn’t mean to be as forceful as he is, but he grabs the kid’s face just the same, jerks Jared’s chin down until they’re eye to eye. The tracks of Jared’s tears glisten on his face in the relentless sun. “It wouldn’t be easier, and do you know why? Because if you just up and snuffed it, well then, goddammit so would I. And then my mom would be pissed as hell that I did, and kick both our asses. So none of this dying talk, it’s all crap, alright? You’re not going through all this shit with your parents on your own, okay? I’m in this“‒ he gestures to the shimmery memory around them, the maze which he cannot see beyond the sun—“For the long haul, alright, kid? You don’t get a free kick the bucket ticket, not for a solo rider. You jump, I jump, got it?”  
  
“What are you saying?”  
  
“I’m saying…” Jensen fishes around his head for the right word. He doesn’t have enough context, enough colloquial phrases from Jared, to have any inclination what this between them is. Five minutes ago Jensen was the kid who’d moved in next door. Now he is…he is…, “I’m saying I’m your best friend, so don’t do anything stupid because anything you can do I’ll probably do shortly after. Together, or not at all, you got it, Padalecki? So no more dying, okay?”  
  
Jensen’s still got Jared’s chin—that stubborn, damp, peach-fuzzed chin—held between his fingers, but he gives Jared a good hard look before letting go. Jared looks more surprised than terrified that a random stranger—or at least, what  _should_  be a random stranger to him, because that’s exactly what Jensen  _is_ —just declared them best friends, and he hurriedly wipes the tears from his face.  
  
They watch the waves for a bit longer, Jared wiping his face on his sleeve, Jensen trying to scramble enough coherency together to understand what the fuck is going on. What the fuck is going on? All his skill, his decades of research, were being undone in this very simple act of conversation and interaction, and there was nothing Jensen could do to stop it. He was powerless against the emotions Jared shed, like sticky waves that clung to Jensen, weighing him down, coagulating in his synapses and making him slower.  
  
He needed to get out. He needed to  _breathe_ , awake, eyes seeing, mind closed. Maybe some meditation, maybe Cortese was right about that trip to Jeff’s office. Escape was necessary, and this far into the mind, there was only one way to do it.  
  
Jensen’s lips are puckering and he’s whistling before he can stop himself, the tune falling past his lips and sinking into the memory space like a dagger, tearing the fabric apart, rendering it useless. The thread wrapped around his wrist, usually invisible, but always present, glows white with heat as it pulls his wrist out towards the maze, towards the exit hatch. He can already see the seams splitting, the veil of the maze beneath the maze of the beach, and beyond that Jared staring at him, wide eyed.  
  
“What are you—“  
  
But Jensen’s already onto the chorus and the memory bursts like a bubble, Jensen slipping out with the remains of it.  
  
\--  
  
The interns are silent when Jensen’s eyes open, and he finds he almost prefers the chattering panic. He can tell they’re trying to rein it in, but Chad is visibly twitching, and Genevieve’s ashen.  
  
“Everything okay?”  
  
“You were out for two hours, standard time.” Cortese seems to be checking and rechecking the timers and monitors, voice steady, but pitched low enough that he knows she’s a bit worried. Two hours makes a regular session of mind mapping, sometimes a little more, usually a little less. Pushing it beyond that, while not unheard of, was borderline risky, and incredibly rare. It’d been a while since Jensen had done a full two hours, which would explain why he felt so exhausted all of a sudden. “Took you a while to come to, but, then again it’s been a while since you ran a full two marathon.”  
  
Reading his mind just like always, that Gen Cortese. Damn her.  
  
Jensen sits up, cracking joints in his neck, the stiff after effect of a nap that went on too long. Christ he’s tired. “No one thought to Call me?”  
  
“Vitals were stable throughout,” Chad reports, “we really had no reason to.”  
  
Jensen blinks. Memories are permeable, like cell membranes, and things can pass through them, thoughts, feelings, they can be interrupted, even when reliving them. Things from the outside as well, noises, other memories, sensations. The Call wakes the mind mapper immediately, stimulates that part of the brain which more easily distinguishes reality from memory. Like a phone line, it works both ways. He’d Called up the memory, that one thread that tethers him to his own reality, his own mind.  
  
“I Called myself,” Jensen says aloud, barely listening but for the furious notes being taken, the serious nods hanging on to his every word, “I realized I was too entrenched. I pulled out.”  
  
Entrenched did not feel an appropriate enough word to cover it. Jensen could easily pass out for a few hours right now, and the muscles in his arms tremble as he hoists himself out of the tub onto the seat, detaches the electrodes from himself. He can remember it all, in intimate detail‒ each sensation, each thought and emotion, as if they too were now tied to him and pulling him down and back into Jared’s mind rather than his own.  
  
“Why were you down there for so long?” Genevieve asks, snapping him out of his reverie. “What did you see?”  
  
“Pop quiz kids: when does sleep feel ephemeral?” Jensen asks back by way of response.  
  
“When it’s a good dream,” Chad pipes up, and for once his answer doesn’t come with a sarcastic tone or glib remark. “You were in a good memory, weren’t you?”  
  
Jensen nods, and that’s the first lie he’s told today. The sandbox had been happy, Jared’s infectious giggle happy. But the cloudy eyed Jared of hoodies and staring at the sun had not been. That should have, if anything, sped time up. No one likes rehashing bad memories, even to torture oneself; the memories are always succinct and to the point. But Jensen can feel the remnants of Jared’s memory, of the sandy beach, the cool air, the sticky linoleum of the chair in the attorney’s office, sticking to him. Jared’s depression—because it was that, depression, a dark piss colored depression weighing down the air in the kid’s chest—felt tangible, enough that Jensen didn’t feel like moving. He felt like staring at the sun, wondering whether or not he really was dying, and life was just a more prolonged diagnosis of that.  
  
“Cortese, I want you and Murray to drag up the Padalecki’s family records. Find anything you can on a baby sister, Megan, I think her name is.”  
  
Cortese and Murray nod, and Jensen relaxes for a fraction of a second, and though his eyes have been closed two hours, he feels sleep beckoning him further still. He feels exhausted. This kid is exhausting.  
  
“Return the patient to ICU, you know the drill.” Gen and Chad nod, and he’s more than aware of the excited flurry of whispers that descend once they reach the hallway with the patient.  
  
Jensen watches Jared Padalecki’s retreating head, realizing with a pang that in trying to kill himself, Jared had been trying to end that drawn out diagnosis of death. He wanted it, short and sweet. That bothers Jensen more than it should.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

Jeff Morgan, chief of the Psych Ward, is an odd bird. He’s easily the most respected and longest working doctor in this hospital, but in a world where the men in charge are so quick to stick to the tried and true methods of medicine, Dr. Morgan is the one encouraging everyone to pioneer forward with clinical trials. He was the one who put up the first funding package for Jensen’s experiments with mind mapping. He’s also the one who’s stuck by Jensen even when it felt like the entire idea of mind mapping was complete and absolute shit. He’s Jensen saving grace, Jensen’s mentor, and the closest thing to a father Jensen can remember having.  
  
His office somehow always smells of the aftermath of a strong cigar, but Jensen knows for a fact that Morgan is an absolute health nut who has never smoked a goddamn day in his life. Mystery within a paradox, that Doc Morgan. Jensen supposes it’s why they get along so well, no questions about the past necessary.  
  
“How’s he doing?” He doesn’t need to specify who he’s asking about.  
  
“Difficult.” Jensen takes a long draught of a very large coffee. “There’s a lot of emotional trauma that goes back to childhood. It may take a while.”  
  
“How long is a while?”  
  
Jensen scratches at the sharpie of his initials on the side of a cup. “I don’t know. Normally I can just diagnose a patient in no time flat. This one’s different.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
His mouth falls open, then closes with a snap. He’s not sure there’s a proper way to explain.  
  
“Jensen.” Doc Morgan removes his glasses, polishes them on his sweater. “I’m your therapist. But I am also your friend, I’d like to think. Unprofessional as that may seem, you can trust me.”  
  
“Do you remember Patient X?”  
  
Jeff’s pen halts on the center of the page, and he nods tightly. “Your 24th patient in the teaching program. You gave him to Collins.”  
  
Collins. One of Jensen’s best and brightest, showed absolute promise as a mind mapper. Plucky, quick witted, emotionally detached. Jensen had been absolutely sure he was ready for anything, and sent him right into patient X—male, Caucasian, 52, went into a coma after a bad reaction to anesthetic during a dental procedure—without a thought.  
  
It had been fine: Collins had gone in, diagnosed the patient, said it’d be done in a week, and the patient would be up and running in no time flat.  
  
Jensen hadn’t known that he’d just tossed Collins right into the mind of a serial killer, one who had been kidnapping and torturing women to death in his basement for the better part of the last two decades. Jensen didn’t know, because Collins didn’t tell him, preferred to keep it a secret. Patient X’s mind was a dark place, and like quicksand, Collins sunk so deep into the patient’s thoughts that soon he had been unable to tell logic from emotion, distinguish sympathy from psychology. He didn’t cure the patient, he rather, he decided to help him, to support his secret cause.  
  
Jensen’s first suspicion began when Collins had been on sick leave for more than a week. A trip into Patient X’s mind worried him.  
  
But the suspicions weren’t confirmed until he saw the newspaper headlines for missing young women on the homeless circuit. That’s pretty much when it had all fallen to shit.  
  
Collins was simply carrying on the behavior he’d learned from the mind that had corrupted him: kidnapping, torturing, adapting the methods of Patient X to a more relative environment for Collins tastes. In the end Jensen alerted the authorities of his suspicions and Collins was stopped, but Jensen had nearly had his program removed in the wake of the disaster, and he  _did_  lose his first class of interns.  
  
Now, years later, he’s not about to make another fuck up and lose another class, and possibly his job on top of all that.  
  
“You told me once that mind mapping was a lifesaving procedure, but only as long as it didn’t cost our minds in return.”  
  
“And do you feel that you’re losing your mind, Jensen?”  
  
“My current patient is…particularly emotional. Normally, I can sift through it but this patient, their emotions are…particularly vivid.”  
  
“How vivid?”  
  
“I think they left a thumbprint,” Jensen says.  
  
“And why do you think that?”  
  
“Macaroni and cheese,” Jensen says simply, “I can taste macaroni and cheese. I know the taste of it.”  
  
“Doesn’t everyone?” Jeff smiles, “It’s a pretty damn good dish, if I do say myself.”  
  
“I’m lactose intolerant,” Jensen says, “I haven’t had cheese since I was two, when my mom gave me a grilled cheese and I threw up all over my car seat. I’ve never had macaroni and cheese. Not once.”  
  
They stare at each other over the linoleum of the desk, Jeff’s left hand dragging over the salt and pepper grit of his stubble, thoughtful. Thumbprints, so named for the impression they leave behind, were wholly unique. A memory, no matter how common place and generic, is always one of a kind. No one has ever tasted macaroni and cheese the way Jared has, no one except for Jensen, for the memory was now his too, imprinted on his brain like a bruise.  
  
Like a thumbprint.  
  
“Collins had thumbprints?” Jeff asks after a long moment.  
  
“His brain was covered in them,” Jensen nods. Thumbprints appear like any other brain abnormality, because in a way they are. It’s a piece of information one’s mind is unaccustomed to, a sort of foreign object, a vestigial organ. It affects the thinking process, forms a bond between the patient and the doctor. “Which stems….attachment, as you already know.”  
  
“It makes the doctor protective of the patient in a way that goes beyond medicine, you mean.”  
  
“Yes,” Jensen says, frowning.  
  
Misha Collins had been brilliant. But one thumbprint from a former serial killer had been destructive to every point of his career that he’d worked towards. Because one thumbprint turned into another, and another, and then Collins himself was identifying as a killer. The entire situation had been a fiasco for the teaching program, and Jensen had almost lost his funding and his grants. The only reason he was saved was because the program had been so successful thus far.  
  
But Jared Padalecki didn’t feel like a serial killer. Or any kind of sociopathic sort, for that matter.  
  
“Do you believe the patient is worth saving?” Jeff asks.  
  
“I think he’s worth not leaving him to rot in the confines of his own body,” Jensen says, because regardless of his thoughts on him, the patient deserves that much.  
  
“Then you write it down. Record what you retain. And maintain aloofness, Jensen. You’re a good man and a very compassionate teacher, but you’ve got to stay detached from the business of it. Your job is to save lives, not fix hurt feelings.”  
  
Outwardly, Jensen agrees. But then, he’s blindsided by the feeling and memory of sitting next to Jared in the sand, hearing Jared speak in metaphors, feeling the slightest bit crazy for feeling, for understanding.  
  
It wasn’t his job to relate to Jared. Never mind that Jared could see and hear him. Never mind all of that.  
  
“Listen to the patient’s mind,” Jeff offers kindly, “listen to what their memories are telling you. It’s the only way you’re going to know what they need to wake up.  
  
“Listen to his thoughts, Jensen; learn the language of them. You’ll find your way through the maze.”  
  
\--  
  
The house is quiet when Jensen gets in it, but he knows by the tell-tale glugging of the coffee machine that Genevieve beat him home.  
  
With all the ramps Jensen has installed into the floors and levels of his house by now, one’d think it’d not take such a long time to get home. But Jensen had taken a cab today, politely declining his own vehicle, which Gen usually drove. There were days that Jensen was okay with their strange partnership of mutual assistance, and there were days were he got on the bus and pretended, even if for the brief half an hour between hospital and home, that he was a normal guy, who didn’t need to be driven places or wheel himself up ramps, or always be sitting down.  
  
Psychiatrists and physical therapists alike would say Jensen had adapted well to become a paraplegic. Days like today could not prove them more wrong.  
  
“Rough day?” Gen calls from the kitchen, like she didn’t see him over an hour ago, like he wasn’t giving her explicit instructions on surgical procedures for the last three or so years.  
  
Jensen grunts, reaches to the counter for his designated mug and feels the warmth of it push underneath his skin, which feels perpetually damp and perpetually cold thanks to the constant Seattle rains. The mug is a gag gift Gen bought him on his last birthday, painted like a prescription bottle for a bold lettered ‘c o f f e e’. He sighs into his mug, it tastes like sinking into a warm bath; he could drown in this coffee right here right now.  
  
“I’m making pancakes,” Gen announces from over by the stove, where a sizzle and crackle mixes with the cadence of her voice. Her usual high ponytail is now relaxed in looser waves about her shoulders, dark and beautiful, like she hadn’t just spent a twelve hour shift on the floor.  
  
Jensen will never understand that energy she has. Not as long as he lives.  
  
Jensen glances at the clock. “Gen, it’s seven in the evening.”  
  
“Well then,  _Jen_ , all the more reason.”  
  
She serves up a stack of steaming flapjacks with butter and whipped cream, just the way Jensen likes them, but she makes him grab his own fork, his own napkin, the syrup from the pantry. Always little things she won’t help him with. Jensen appreciates it more than she’ll ever know.  
  
He likes that they call each other by their first names after work; it’s an informality that Jensen has never opposed and Genevieve has never forced, but just a few weeks after they moved in together, there they were every evening like clockwork, Jensen sipping his dark coffee, Gen, her peppermint tea, rubbing her lips against the warm ceramic before sitting down, a silent unspoken ritual between the two of them. They don’t talk about work, or the other interns; Gen doesn’t ask him about his latest physical therapy session, or if he’s slept in the last two days. He’d like to think that she’s respecting his privacy and their arrangement, but he knows that—like all things he and Gen don’t talk about—she probably already knows how work went and if he’d slept.  
  
“I saw Orville and Scuttle outside the roost this morning,” Gen says casually, “I think they’re getting attached.”  
  
“They always do.” Jensen makes a mental note to stop by the roost when he’s not so damn tired, when his eyes aren’t seeing sunny beaches instead of the secluded woods his house is structured in.  
  
“By the way,” Gen says slowly, forking a hunk of her full stack, “I looked into the patient’s family. Megan Padalecki, his little sister. Died at four months old, SID Syndrome.”  
  
Sudden Infant Death. Jared was probably barely a kid at the time. But it explained what Jared had been suggesting, even if that hadn’t been the whole story.  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“Nothing health related. Patient has a damn near perfect medical record, no history of mental instability or depression, no referrals from counselors or anything. If the kid really wanted to kill himself, there was certainly no one around to stop him or try and help him.”  
  
And that was exactly the problem. Jensen purses his lips, continuing to chase after the remaining warmth at the bottom of his mug.  
  
“You see this a lot, you know,” Gen interjects again, quieter now, the edges of her fork dragging through the puddle of her syrup on her plate, leaving tracks that fill and erase themselves again and again and again. “Kids like him, they’ve got nobody, so they don’t think anyone will miss them, so it’s really just easier to end it all. If it’s not disease or drug addiction, it’s this. There’s always something that kills you.”  
  
“He wasn’t in the system. He had parents,” Jensen puts forward firmly and Gen says, “I know.”  
  
“He had a job. He was taking photography classes at the community college. There was a reason for him to not just end it all.”  
  
“’Dunno,” Gen shrugs, slipping off the elastic hair tie from one wrist to the other, before tying her hair up with it in one swift and practiced motion, a gesture that leaves a sloppy bun that couldn’t look better if it had been styled that way. He knows the tell, though. The hair goes up when she’s working, as if she can individually tuck away her deeper concerns and emotions, wrap them all up in the darker strands of hair. It’s her detached look, dissociating from the current situation so she can keep her focus, “When you’re at that point, reasons come a dime a dozen.”  
  
“Were you ever like that?” Jensen is pretty sure he knows the answer to that question, but another condition of this living arrangement—like sharing coffee together, like the general No Work Discussion—forbade him from analyzing her.  
  
“Once,” Gen says deliberately, “but then a little birdie called to me in a dream and told me things were going to get better, and that I could do something with my insignificant existence, and I woke to a new day.”  
  
She doesn’t look at him when she says it, but it comes with the slightest flush that always crops up when Gen realizes she’s slipped up and said something sentimental. Jensen’s touched just the same.  
  
“What did Jeff say?” She takes his plate—full of pancakes, because Jensen’s appetite, while present, is something he’s trying to stave off, to see what happens. Another experiment springing from raw curiosity. It’s not that Jensen’s intent on driving himself into the ground; it’s that, some days more than others, he doesn’t care enough to try anything else. “Any advice?”  
  
“He said to listen. That mind mapping is so visual, so tangible, that we often forget that the basis of psychiatry, of the whole couch-time therapy, is to listen.”  
  
“Well then,” Gen says, digging right into his pancakes and finishing them off like this is the last chance she’ll have to eat again, a habit she’s never been able to break. “You better listen then.” Jensen says nothing and continues to watch her eat with borderline fascination. If there’s food nearby, she’ll eat it, even if she’s already full. Some days he thinks she does it to be obnoxious, but there’s a savagery to the way she eats that implies she’s eating to cure hunger pangs that never truly faded in the first place.  
  
Truthfully, he wishes he could do the same. But like many things—like his legs, like his empty ring finger—his appetite became this useless appendage attached to him that he wishes he could just kick off, shed like a skin. He knew it was there, his appetite, but days like this came and all he wanted to do is see what would happen if he ignored the rumbling of his stomach. Questions arise just like they do in the lab, so he conducts his own little experience, just to see how far he can push himself. Jensen’s not suicidal, Jensen’s not even depressed. He’s just got days where the skin he’s in feels far away, detached from himself, and Jensen’s curiosity has always been his worst vice.  
  
Pushing his body, finding the limits, it’s the only thing out here in the real world that felt productive. Everything else lies in the space in that tub, under that needle, inside that mind. Any mind. Any mind that belonged to any body that wasn’t his.  
  
The hunger sits there, and he feels it, but he waits to see how long until he can win out, distantly curious about the limits his body will let him go to, what control he can exert with sheer force of will, of mind. In the end, the body always wins, but Jensen likes to think he has the upper hand.  
  
But his body is very much like a glass of water; there’s no controlling something after it’s already shattered and spilled.  
  
\--  
  
  
As per Jeff’s request, Jensen decides to listen. Jensen decides to learn.  
  
Procedures with coma patients are usually a quick in and out. While the mind is a complex thing, humans are typically not. But this patient, Jared, will require a different approach.  
  
Jensen can’t deny he’s slightly titillated by that.  
  
Jared’s mind is a myriad of places to go to. The thoughts connect, one to the other, without rhyme or reason. Jensen barely suggests a thought and he’s sinking into Jared’s mind‒ footfalls in quicksand‒ and Jensen would love to say he hates it but he does not; he never could.  
  
Jared’s head is far too fascinating for Jensen to be anything but intrigued.  
  
He rolls into the office the next morning, black coffee in hand, with bells on. The interns are waiting for him, freshly showered, clutching their own coffees like their lives depend on it. Jensen, exiting the elevator, takes in their body language. Gen’s slightly off kilter stance, arms crossed, eyeing Murray, the two of them downing their steaming cups of coffee, probably in hopes of drinking away remnants of sleep. She visibly brightens when Jensen approaches, and says, “The patient is prepped and ready, sir. Ready to rev?”  
  
She’s excited. Both them are. But Jensen feels a distant warmth for Gen that surpasses what he’s known for previous interns. Chad is great, but Jensen’s well aware of his the light sneer in his expression whenever he so much as looks at Gen. Not that she seems to mind much, from the way she dutifully ignores him.  
  
“Look alive, Dr. Ackles.” Gen hands him the chart, which includes the four slips that confirm the interns went to their early morning psych evals, standard protocol ever since the Patient X incident. He barely glances over the paper work because he knows exactly what he’s going to find: Jared Padalecki, enigmatic and floating just out of reach, a mind that he can’t quite read or map out quite right. The interns’ questions and morning snark is a blur as he straps himself to the machine and begins to lower himself into the chair, ready to go.  
  
“Alright everybody, let’s save a life today,” Jensen grins, unusually chipper, and Chad whoops loudly.  
  
The only thing he can do is be ready for anything. This won’t be any different from the standard, routine procedure, is what he tells himself, already bracing for the impact that is Jared’s mind. And it’s with that thought that he closes his eyes, and gives in.  
  
\--  
  
When Jensen was fourteen or so, he became obsessed with flying after an 8th grade field trip to an air show on the military base. He’d been in rapture watching F-16s and Hornets zip by, faster than their own roar. Jensen couldn’t believe that idea: that these planes moved so fast they were silent for just a few seconds, because the sound couldn’t catch up to them fast enough. Memories are supposed to be like that too; one sees the visual before one feels the emotion, as if it takes a while to sink in to the skin, truly affect the brain chemistry.  
  
Jared’s memories are the opposite. The speed of the emotions is enough that Jensen is still in blackness when the happiness hits him, filling him up so rapidly that Jensen bursts out laughing without even knowing the reason why. He gropes blindly in the empty space of the mind, wishing for it to come rushing at him again, the picture to go with the feeling of  _happy_ , popping like hot kernels in his belly.  
  
Faster than the speed of sound, Jared’s happiness. Louder, too.  
  
The rattling of the bike wheels and the chatter of seagulls echoes just a bit before cementing. Jensen blinks and then he’s biking, an even path of boardwalk, hands settled on his shoulders, gripping for dear life as if terrified to let go, but he feels Jared’s laughter and whooping in his own chest cavity.  
  
So it’s a good day, then. Jensen feels an oddly pungent wave of relief hit him at the notion that Jared gets to have those.  
  
Just as it did before, Jared’s mind changes Jensen before he can even think to try, matching the cadence of his voice with that of a kid. He looks down to see the transformation already taken place in the blink of an eye. It’s as if Jared’s mind made itself up and fit Jensen right into the memory space without him even needing to say a word. What was once a body of full maturation is now all scrawny arms and hoarse voice belonging to the rowdy rambunctiousness of a ten year old who can’t shut up.  
  
“Faster!” Jared screams, and Jensen swerves to avoid smaller children, tourists, mothers pushing their babies in prams, and they’re either going to kill or be killed but Jared’s happiness is an instant and inescapable high, lifting Jensen up with Jared. Jared’s fingers gouge into Jensen’s shoulders and it hurts but Jensen can’t feel it, too busy tripping on the helium giggles in Jared’s throat, the adoration cooking in the apples of his cheeks.  
  
They’re flying and they’re flying and they’re flying, beach and water whizzing by and Jared’s  _screaming_ , pure peals of joy that inflate until there’s hardly room left to breathe, those piping hot kernels in his belly bursting like buttery warm popcorn.  
  
And Jared loves him. That thought fills him almost painfully in the way it startles Jensen, who had once thought after everything he’d seen and experienced that he could never be surprised again. It isn’t right, Jared so unabashedly loving someone he only thinks he knows. The human subconscious is naturally defensive; it protects itself against outsiders, people it doesn’t know. But Jared’s mind bends and makes room for Jensen, loves Jensen without raising so much as a question about it. Jensen, who spent so many times sneaking around a patient’s most personal memories, feeling like a thief, now feels completely off guard. Like instead of having to steal the treasures inside, Jared was handing them out for free, like candy.  
  
But love is not candy and Jensen is a stranger. And god, it winds him; it really just kicks Jensen in the pants, the shock of it all, that this patient’s strange mind takes Jensen and feels only this.  
  
They’re ten years old and Jensen bikes faster and Jared loves him and loves him and loves him but Jared isn’t even truly aware that Jensen exists outside of this and Jensen slams on the brakes to tell Jared to stop it but he slams too hard and they’re pitching forward, weightless and flying and falling, falling, _falling_ , and Jensen’s ripped away from the shock he’s barely begun to understand as wonderment.  
  
The memory changes faster than the speed of sound. He never sees it coming.  
  
There is a selfish part of Jensen that knows this shouldn’t be his favorite part of the job. He’s a doctor, after all, and the whole purpose of his research, of this procedure, is for the benefit of helping others, not himself. Regardless, it’s intriguing enough, the concept that appearance is subjective depending on whose mind they’re in, who they want to be. Minds are malleable, the matter in between neurons and thoughts even more so, which means part of the work is based entirely in camouflage.  
  
People see what they want to see, most especially in the safety of their own minds. Mind mapping, the literal incarnation of waltzing into the breach of a person’s most sacred spot, means that the laws of appearance, of perception, all come down to how a person wants to see themselves. The mind mapper’s job is to play on that, blend in, not give the patient’s mind any reason for suspicion.  
  
He’ll never admit it out loud, but this’ll be the best part of his day, bar none.  
  
In the real world, Jensen can think. Jensen can postulate and theorize and wheel about in his chair and be respected and feared. Jensen can bark orders and save lives just seconds before families decide to pull the plug.  
  
In his mind? Jensen can run.  
  
In his mind’s eye Jensen’s legs are strong, calves taut and wiry with muscle that winds and stretches its way around his bones like a taffy pulling machine. He’s strong from running, from climbing the steps of the hospital rather than taking the elevator, from going out dancing with his coworkers at the clubs rather than staying indoors and reading. He walks on those strong legs now, turning the corner of whatever part of the mind he’d been deposited into.  
  
He runs now, chest heaving, throat working to take in deeper lungfuls of air even though realistically he knows he’s not actually running and he’s not actually breathing as hard as he is. He runs through the maze, waiting for the next memory to crop up, the next dead end to work out.  
  
He barrels forward without a second thought, heels flying as he pushes against the cellophane, gritting his teeth until he feels the surface bend till it breaks, memory gushing over and drowning him.  
  
The scent of the forest—crisp pine, damp and crackling leaves—doesn’t register until he gasps that first desperate gulp of air, lungs ragged from the miles they’ve already breathed through. He doesn’t stop, though, until he trips over a heavy log, feet colliding with solid mass and it’s with a strangled yelp that he falls.  
  
“What the—“ Jensen scrambles to straighten when he realizes that he’s changed appearance before even thinking of doing so, before catching sight of the solid figure—a figure, not a log or a boulder—lying not far from where Jensen fell.  
  
It’s Jared, curled on his side, fingers flexing in the dead leaves along the forest floor, face dirty and tear streaked.  _Fifteen,_  Jensen can feel the age permeate the memory like dye, dissolving within the air, salt in water, invisible, except for the way it tastes on Jensen’s tongue, puckered, salty, hard to take in.  
  
Jared should feel Jensen coming, but he still jumps when Jensen prowls forward out of the dark.  
  
“Playing hide and seek?” Jensen asks playfully, thrilled beyond measure, practically vibrating with excitement at the notion of seeing Jared, drinking in the sight of Jared though he just saw him but a moment ago. He’s still chasing that high of Jared’s happiness, waiting almost expectantly for Jared to scream ‘Faster, Jensen, faster!’ because in this line of work Jensen has felt and seen many things but he’s never quite felt anything like  _that_. That happiness, that joy, was unlike anything that existed, ever.  
  
Jared raises his head, and with it comes a staggering wooziness where Jensen wanted happiness, a hard and rushing concussion that wraps around Jensen’s senses in a cotton fog, numbing his vision.  
  
“Shit,” Jensen whispers, and then he’s stumbling and crawling forward, grasping for Jared’s skull, checking his pulse, his pupils for response. Jared’s eyelashes flutter reprehensively, and when Jensen’s fingers prod at the soft but steady pulse inside Jared’s neck he outright groans in protest, but Jared’s glad to see him, Jensen knows because Jensen feels it. There’s a feeble flutter in Jensen’s gut that feels something like happiness, but it’s warped with pain that quickly turns the pleasure straight into nausea.  
  
“Don’t tell Mom,” Jared slurs around a mouthful of blood, a bent tooth in the front of his mouth. “Jensen, you gotta—“  
  
Jensen shushes him and pulls Jared, groaning and cursing, over to prop him against a tree. “What happened, Jared, what happened?” he asks, but Jared’s eyes are glassy with pain and what was a dream has quickly turned into a nightmare, and it’s frantically that he tries to find some way of cleaning Jared up. He cleans up Jared’s wounds best he can but with nothing but a tattered hoodie and some tissues in his pocket, there’s not much he can do. Jared just laughs at the pain.  
  
“Bet you’re getting tired of finding me in these kinds of scrapes,” he wheezes, and Jensen huffs. He’s never seen any kind of scrape, but he can play along with whatever if it means Jared not realizing what’s actually going on. Jensen can pretend that he’s seen Jared in all kinds of scrapes, even if this is only his second time officially meeting Jared’s mind, because as soon as Jared is healed and awake, all this will ever be is a dream he can’t quite remember, and that’s enough for Jensen.  
  
“Nothing brings me greater pleasure than saving your ass, again and again,” Jensen says sarcastically, too worried to be comforted by the joking tone in Jared’s voice.  
  
“Always saving me,” Jared quips, blackened eye rolling even as he winces in pain. “Big damn hero, is what you are.”  
  
“Someone’s got to save your dumb ass,” Jensen responds, swiping a thumb just over the bruise on Jared’s cheekbone, wondering what would happen if he pressed just a little. Would he absorb that cheekbone bruise, know what it felt like on his own skin? He can feel Jared’s hurt, a dull constant all over his skin. He touches the bruise again, gentler.  
  
The stutter of heartbeat is what catches his attention, and though Jared is staring steadily at him, the heartbeat is there, fluttering like a frantic dove trying to beat its way out of the cage.  
  
There’s something deeper than the bruises along Jared’s ribs, Jensen can feel it. He just can’t make out what it is, layered with pain and hurt as it is. It’s not as clear as the unadulterated happiness of the previous memory fresh and unmarred by innocence. No, this is a different emotion. Jensen doesn’t possibly know.  
  
There’s a water bottle and some tissues in the backpack he’s just discovered—how did it get there? Did Jared’s mind put it there for him?—and he begins trying to do his best to clean Jared up. There’s not much he can do without a first aid kit, though; Jared really is beat to hell.  
  
Jensen cleans slowly, methodically, trying to tune into the emotional frequency Jared’s giving off, this weird desperate void that feels like the after echoes of sadness. Jensen would call it hopelessness, but he can’t reconcile that image with the boy who’d wanted to fly faster and never stop.  
  
Jared wasn’t hopeless, Jared was fine.  
  
Jared would be fine.  
  
“I’m tired.” He doesn’t sound fine.  
  
“Don’t you dare fall asleep on me, Padalecki.”  
  
“I like sleep. I get to dream.” The bruises are purpling; he doesn’t look fine either.  
  
“Yeah well, save it for another time. Not on my watch.”  
  
Jared sighs dramatically, and watches Jensen fret with the water bottle for a few more seconds. And then he says, all humor and pain gone from his tone, “Jensen.”  
  
Jensen looks at him, and it occurs to him that it’s the first time he’s really, truly looked into Jared’s eyes. They’re blurry with hurt and one is slightly swollen shut but they’re intense, even in the dark, and shining at Jared sincerely. They’ve got no color apart from the hue of shadows and moonlight, but they hold Jensen still, as paralyzing as Jared’s emotions themselves, seizing the air in Jensen’s chest as if a vacuum has sucked it out of his lungs.  
  
“I have this dream.” Jared leans close, and he smells like dirt and used sunscreen. “I don’t know why but I have this dream, and you’re always in it. My dreams always change, location, subject, what I’m doing. But one thing never changes, and that’s you. You’re always there Jensen, even in my dreams.”  
  
Jared leans back on the forest floor, eyes still locked on Jensen. “I don’t know what it is, but as long as you’re around, everything’s a little less shitty. So. Thank you.”  
  
“Don’t mention it,” Jensen says, Jared’s look boring into him just a little deeper. He can barely make out the shadows in Jared’s face, but they’re there. Jensen can’t see Jared‒ wants to  _see_  Jared‒ but pressing closer feels like pressing close to something dangerous, pressing closer to that weird vacuous feeling in Jared’s chest that reminds Jensen of the memory of the divorce office, of that identical feeling in Jared’s chest. So he sits back on his heels, waits for Jared to speak again, tries to sort through his own muddled thoughts, inebriated by Jared’s emotions, violent and brilliant and in ever perpetuatual torrents as constant as Seattle rains. Silence.  
  
Then, “Milo wanted to fight. So I fought.”  
  
But there are more than two sets of footprints in the dirt of this clearing. “Seems like it was three against one. Doesn’t sound like much of a fight.”  
  
“I held my own.” Jared wipes more blood from his mouth.  
  
“Why were those dickheads beating you up?”  
  
Jared shrugs, gingerly touching the swollen bloody mess of a bottom lip thanks to Milo Ventimiglia. Jensen has no clue how he knows the name but he did, innately, as if the second Jared mentioned it, the name was already familiar; as if the second Jared said it Jensen had known the name his whole life.  
  
That’s more troubling than it should be.  
  
The forest floor is barely lit but even Jensen can see the way Jared shrinks in on himself just a bit, that strange void in his chest grows just a little bit larger.  
  
“It’s been like that for a while, the bullying. You haven’t been around much, but I’m okay. I can handle them just fine.”  
  
“Clearly.”  
  
“What am I supposed to do, go cry to my mommy?” Jared snaps, and Jensen can feel the hurt curving around the shape of each word.  
  
“Why were they hitting you, Jared?” Jared asks, and Jared shrugs, again, unforgiving mountains in his shoulders that Jared himself can’t see, and in a flash Jensen sees the boy that Jared is then, the man he is going to become. If Jared had known, would that have saved him? “Does there have to be a reason?”  
  
Jensen speaks slowly, thinking up the only lesson he can remember his mother ever teaching him. “According to my mother, there’s a reason for everything. Not necessarily a good reason, but a reason just the same.”  
  
_Just like there’s a reason you kill yourself at age twenty-four,_  Jensen thinks absentmindedly.  
  
“You know why they were hitting me.” The tightening of Jared’s throat, like he’s choking on air he didn’t swallow. Jensen hears the thought before Jared even says the words.  
  
“I’m gay, Jensen. I’m gay and they hate me for it.”  
  
Something along the lining of Jensen’s stomach tightens but he doesn’t have time or pause to think much of it. Jared’s shaking, shaking like a leaf and Jensen’s a doctor but he doesn’t know how to fix this, how to fix Jared, and all the edges of him are shaking apart in this moment.  
  
These memories Jensen runs into and interacts with, they represent a person in pieces, someone who absolutely shattered apart in their final moments. And Jensen cares for each of those pieces, broken and jagged as they are.  
  
“I know there’s nothing wrong with being gay, in a roundabout fucking way. I know it. But they don’t.”  
  
“How did they know? Did you tell them?”  
  
“They knew we were sleeping in the tent together. They see us hanging out at school”‒ School? Jensen can’t recall a memory that involves school‒ “I tried to tell them that we weren’t, that you’re not—“  
  
“Yeah.” Jensen’s skin feels pulled tight, but he doesn’t know if that’s because he’s feeling that way or because Jared is feeling that way. He breathes harshly through his nostrils, trying to inhale earth, pine, a scent to ground the way he—Jared—is feeling, terrified and hurt, off kilter.  
  
Jared’s emotions override and smother Jensen’s line of thinking; he can barely think straight, barely process the brain power it takes to remember that this isn’t real, none of this is real. Jared’s mind is just trying to lull him to sleep, protect itself from the intrusion and distract him from getting deeper, getting closer to the Center.  
  
“Fuck ‘em,” Jensen says, and he takes Jared’s hand and hauls him up to standing, Jared groaning in protest all the while. “Who needs them? I’m  _way_ better than Milo and those punks, aren’t I?”  
  
“You’re alright,” Jared says, but it’s under a bloody smile.  
  
The thing is, Jensen could make up a million reasons for why he’s saying these things to ease Jared’s mind. Only problem is that they’d all be lies. Because at the bottom of all the educated excuses Jensen could give, he wants to say these things to Jared. He wants to feel that inexplicable happiness and watch the corners of that mouth tug into a rare wayward smile. He’ll spin lies of golden thread from that spinning wheel in his tongue if it means Jared will turn away from the person who jumped off a building.  
  
He doesn’t need a why. He’ll suss out the why later when he’s not choking on the feeling of Jared’s blood on his hands.  
  
“From now on, it’s just you and me, alright?” Jensen says bracingly. “We’ll have each other’s backs always. Anything we go through, we go through together.”  
  
“You and me,” Jared says slowly, chewing the words one by one. “You jump, I jump?”  
  
It’s meant to be a hypothetical question, but the eerie foreshadowing in the hopeful statement sends a shiver down Jensen’s spine.  
  
“You jump, I jump,” Jensen echoes, and the cuts on Jared’s hands smear blood onto his hands, the coppery tinge of it eerie in the darkness and Jensen peers closer, closer, closer until‒  
  
Jensen blinks, and the woods are gone, but the Jared’s hand is still there, the blood is still there, only now it’s gushing.  
  
“Fuck,” Jensen says, grasping for the wrist, for Jared’s swaying frame, Fuck, Jared,  _fuck_!”  
  
“Oops,” Jared says, but Jensen feels the lack of an apology, the bitten off feeling of not-sorry-at-all. There is so much blood.  
  
There are bandages in this bathroom, and though it is not a bathroom he has seen before, Jensen expertly navigates to the medicine cabinet and locates the first aid kit as if he’s used it time and time again. The gash on Jared’s wrist is bloody, and with entering the memory so fast, he’s got no immediate clue as to how it got there.  
  
But there is a shiny razor that clattered to the floor at Jensen’s feet, a sliver of crimson ribboning the sharper edge of the blade.  
  
Jensen doesn’t think about that now. Jensen bandages Jared’s wrist and lays him down on a busted futon that it looks like it could be carrying some serious contagions. Jared curls like a child, just like he did in the forest, and though he’s wearing a giant sweater, he’s shaking again, just as in the memory before.  
  
“Rest,” Jensen says, and Jared’s eyes close. The blood loss wasn’t too severe. With some water and rest he’ll be okay.  
  
Jared’s blood sits and dries on the pads of Jensen’s fingers. He stares at it a long time before he washes it off.  
  
Hours crawl by and he fills them by paying extra attention to the cadence of Jared’s breathing, feels left and rightward tugs of emotion that are dulled by sleep; they’re Jared’s dreams.  
  
Jensen’s exhausted enough just with the simple task of wondering exactly what is happening to him that he loses track of time as he lets his own thoughts wander. Why Jared’s mind is moving to accommodate him, why Jared feels things so  _brilliantly_  intense, emotions bright and dazzling and giving Jensen whiplash like you wouldn’t believe. Previous patients were emotional, they all are, but not to this depth of immersion. Something in Jensen is stirring, something locked away and folded up with the rest of his thoughts and feelings but Jared’s tearing it out of him, piece by shattered piece. Jensen can’t think clearly in here. He can’t think past Jared’s feelings and Jared’s wants and Jared’s concerns. He can’t think past trying to ensure Jared’s happiness. It’s unhealthy, Jensen knows, and probably violating about a dozen doctor-patient protocols. Jared’s gone and scrambled him up so he’s so close, so  _close_  to not even caring, not being able to care. The proper feelings and emotions in his heart are not where they should be, evenly compartmentalized and separated. It’s like Jared’s reached right into his chest, handpicked and sorted them out, in whatever way Jared so chooses.  
  
When Jared wakes, Jensen knows because Jensen feels the fear hit his chest, the guilt, sodden and heavy.  
  
There’s no happiness in this memory. Jensen wonders when was the last point in this winding timeline where Jared knew happiness at all.  
  
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Jared whispers to the more to the futon than to Jensen. “It wasn’t what it looked like. It was an accident.”  
  
Jared’s lies feel better than they should, maybe that’s because Jensen would kill to be able to believe them. “Sure as hell didn’t look like one.”  
  
“I didn’t know you were coming here,” Jared says dully. “I didn’t know you—“  
  
“If you think I don’t care by this point, after all we’ve been through,” Jensen bites hotly, “then you can go fuck yourself Jared, because I’m done.”  
  
Jared doesn’t say anything. He just slides from the futon to huddle next to Jensen, leaning awkwardly against his frame, pressing his cold body to Jensen’s warmer one.  
  
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jared says slowly. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was just—coping.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
Jared picks at the frayed hem of his sweater, his bandages jutting out slightly from the edges of the sleeves. Jensen waits for the answer.  
  
“Stephen left.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t know who Stephen is, nor does he really fucking care, but the simple statement comes with a lung crushing wave of longing, a sadness pulling at Jensen’s innards like a plug, and Jared hurts; he hurts so much that it’s going to take Jensen a moment to gather enough air into his lungs to form a response.  
  
Thankfully, Jared simply fills in the gaps without prompting. “He said he couldn’t take my emo bullshit. That I was going nowhere with my photography, that I was bringing him down. He left.” Jared slowly lifts his head from Jensen’s shoulder, “So I tore down all the photographs, poured down a couple shots. And when that wasn’t enough, I,” he raises his wrist in a casual gesture, “cut away the pain.”  
  
It’s said in such a flippant tone that Jensen has a sudden need to check every inch of Jared’s scars for cuts, confirm just how experienced he is in this, how very normal it is to him. Was Jensen supposed to know? Had Jensen  _seen_  the scars previously and kept his mouth shut. What a stupid fucking idiot Jensen had been, not knowing how bad Jared was sooner, not saving him, not getting him help from a psychiatrist, a counselor, a doctor—  
  
Jensen clenches his jaw and steels his mind to cling to the truth. There was nothing Jensen could have done for Jared because in real life Jensen and Jared don’t know each other. In real life, Jensen and Jared have never met. All this was in his mind. All in his mind. He shakes his head like a dog clearing imaginary water from between his ears. Get it together, Ackles.  
  
It’s only then that Jensen notices the pictures. Tens, maybe hundreds of them, strewn about this shitty one bedroom apartment: Polaroids and still life and portraits, nature in screaming color, buildings in black and white. Jensen guesses they’d be hanging on the several clothes lines hanging along the ceiling, maybe tacked up on the walls, but now they’re torn down, shredded, and cast aside as if for bonfire fodder.  
  
“Your photographs….”  
  
“Not worth it,” Jared says, looking numbly at the ruin. There’s a charred trashcan in the corner of the loft where it looks like Jared tried to burn a bunch of them outside the fire escape. “None of this is worth it, I’m a shit photographer, a shit human being I’m—“  
  
“Stop it,” Jensen pleads, Jared’s breath hitching in his chest and he just wants it to stop, that acute and very specific pain. “You’re so much more than Stephen and all the shit he said, you have to believe that.”  
  
“I don’t know what to believe in anymore.” Jared’s chin wobbles. “I don’t know that I believe in a single goddamn thing.”  
  
“Believe in me,” Jensen says. “Believe that I’ll be here through the worst of it, okay? I’ll weather through it with you.” He glances at the razor on the floor for a split second, then snatches it up, surging with something frenzied. “You hurt, I hurt.” Jensen holds the razor out, and he feels insane, because this is _insane_. “You jump, I jump.”  
  
Jared stares at him, wide eyes flicking between Jensen’s face and the offered razor before he rears back, head jerking back and forth, “N-no.”  
  
“Then I’ll do it,” Jensen says fiercely, some violent anger rising in him because how  _dare_  Jared be this reckless with his life, how dare Jared be so progressively reckless, so flippant with his life. Is he not aware? How much he feels and cares, how much he sees? Jensen feels like he’s been chasing him for miles, and to end up here, even though here is where Jensen knows this is all headed, makes him furious beyond belief, nearly capable of holding still in his anger. “I’ll cut myself and I’ll do it deep, and who knows, maybe I’ll bleed halfway out, too.”  
  
“Wait!” Jared yells, lunging to grab Jensen’s hand just as it comes down. “This is insane, you’re insane, you need to stop—“  
  
“And you need help, Jared,” Jensen says shortly, and he doesn’t mean it to come out so short but dammit he’s scared shitless, for how much he cares, for how helpless he feels to an already lost cause, “So drag me down with you, or I’ll do it myself.” He bunches up the sleeve of his Henley and holds out his forearm to the room, to Jared, holding the razor threateningly until Jared grabs it first with fingers that tremble.  
  
Jared Padalecki is eighteen, eighteen and just as scared as Jensen feels. But Jensen stands on that clammy kitchen floor, doesn’t once blink.  
  
The razor sweeps over the meat of his forearm, right between elbow joint and wrist—stinging, but dulled by the already aching pain in Jensen’s wrists from Jared’s cuts. Jared does it slowly, almost reverently, making a twisted sigh as he releases the pressure from Jensen’s arm, the shaking in his fingers having gone still.  
  
It hurts, but not as much as the thumping in Jensen’s chest, like his heart could explode right past his ribs.  
  
They stare at the oozing cut for a long moment. Neither of them say anything.  
  
“There,” Jared says, eyes moist, “are you happy now?”  
  
And Jensen retorts, “Are you?”  
  
Jared sniffles and then he’s sinking to the floor, deflated, and butting his head against Jensen’s thigh; he sits tall enough that Jensen’s fingers can brush the hairs at the crown of his head. Jensen knows the instinct—by this point—is probably mostly self-indulgent, but he sinks the tips of his fingers into Jared’s hair just the same, not petting or stroking, just pressing the pads of his fingers to the top of Jared’s skull. He leans over to lift Jared’s head, but the memory tilts on an axis, a tilted pinball table until Jensen loses his balance and falls, falls, falls until‒  
  
Jared is  _drunk_ , but it’s the good kind of drunk, warm and self-confident and affectionate, as contagious as a virus. It occurs to Jensen that he’s drunk as well, as the two of them stumble into a bedroom Jensen doesn’t recognize but Jared navigates expertly as if it’s his own.  
  
“C’mon,” Jared giggles, “my dad won’t be back till Sunday, we can crash here.”  
  
And crash they do, sway and tumble into Jared’s bed together, a mess of limbs that’s too tired and weighted by alcohol to be anything but clumsy and not at all as dangerous as it could be. Jared slings a careless arm over Jensen’s stomach, curling up against Jensen’s side and slotting his bony knees in between Jensen’s own.  
  
“We’re gonna regret this tomorrow, aren’t we,” Jared says in a flat tone, to which Jensen laughs, feeling the sound echo oddly in his body, a shout in an ocean that’s all peach schnapps and orange juice, if the taste on his tongue is anything to go by.  
  
“I feel so good,” Jared rambles, mouth slurring around the edges but genuinely pleased. “I feel so good. This is the best birthday ever.”  
  
“Something tells me you won’t be saying that come morning,” Jensen argues half-heartedly, the alcohol, along with Jared’s warm body pressed up against his, too good of a feeling to fight. The physical proximity should feel strange, as Jensen really doesn’t let anyone touch him but Genevieve, and even that’s only in necessary circumstances. But here is Jared, once again the exception to Jensen’s long sought rule of control.  
  
And the strangest part is that he’s not even aware of Jared slipping underneath those fences Jensen’s put up until the broken pieces of the rules lie scattered on the floor.  
  
“You’re so great,” Jared swoons, the love confession that can only happen between friends when alcohol is involved, “My best pal. My rock. My Dwayne. My Johnson.”  
  
“Shut up, you  _idiot_.” And Jensen should have no feeling in his legs but he can feel the knobs of Jared’s knees and ankles pressed to him and it’s good, better than Jensen can remember, that sensation against his legs.  
  
“Don’t know what I ever did to deserve you,” Jared says, and it’s as sweet of a thought as it is a serious one, tapering off into more drunken garbled words as Jared taps out a beat on Jensen’s exposed bicep.  
  
“There’s no deserving me,” Jensen says softly, and though the words are slurred he means them with every fiber of him, “I’m here as long as you’ll have me.”  
  
“Stay forever, then,” Jared says and the unknowing self-awareness of the moment makes Jensen still; it makes Jensen wonder if Jared really does know that Jensen’s not supposed to be here.  
  
“Ok,” Jensen says, lying straight through his fucking teeth.  
  
Jared’s skin is hot and his body is touchy, the kind of physically affectionate that is only ever spurred by an unhealthy amount of alcohol, in Jensen’s experience. But it feels good, this inebriated press of skin, and it unlocks something in the niche of Jensen’s control that make him realize he’s been starving for this for years.  
  
He’s not supposed to let the patient’s memories touch him, yet Jensen finds himself leaning into it like a cat.  
  
They lay like that for a while, but the feeling of three sheets to the wind never strays from Jensen’s system, and he’s no longer sure if that feeling has anything whatsoever to do with alcohol. Jared’s giggles have tapered off and he rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling. Humid summer air wafts in with the swamp cooler and Jensen sucks as much of it in, tries to clear his head of the smell of Jared’s sweat on his skin, the off kilter scent of sea foam in his wind mussed hair.  
  
In this drunken haze, it occurs to Jensen that he should try and get himself out of this, try to make sense of the timeline, figure out how long he’s been under. It feels like literal years since he flung Jared from the bike on the pier, but for all he knows it could have been minutes ago, seconds ago. Time is essentially meaningless in the space of a memory, as people don’t remember time as much as they remember how they felt. How that one moment of life printed and carved into them.  
  
He’ll never admit it to himself, but these imaginary and memory interactions with Jared feel more real to Jensen than anything he’s felt in years.  
  
“I don’t know what I’m going to do for you,” Jensen says aloud, his voice hoarse with alcohol burn and something else a bit foreign, “I really, really don’t.”  
  
Jared whispers the words, but Jensen hears the thought around them clearer. “You’re better. You’re so much better, I’m never gonna understand how I—“  
  
“You keep floating up,” Jensen responds, and the words sound insane but that’s what chasing Jared through the uncharted space of his own mind feels like. Like the deeper in thought, in memory, Jensen goes to get closer to Jared, the more he sinks, and the farther away he gets. He’ll never be as pure as Jared; he will climb and emote and experience as much as he possibly can of Jared’s mind and Jared’s heart, but he just sinks deeper, an inevitable weight that sends him down. “You think I’m better, but you’re so much higher--I keep trying to reach you, but you’re just out of reach, you just keep floating up.”  
  
The closer he gets to Jared’s center the more he cards through his memories and sifts through Jared’s emotions, the farther away Jared feels, this weird paragon of sweetness and earnestness and feeling unlike one Jensen’s ever known. Has anyone ever  _felt_  as intensely as Jared? Hurt and loved and laughed as loud? Jensen entertains the notion that maybe he’s the emotionally stunted one and that Jared is the norm. He thinks of an entire world of people who live like  _this_ : hearts on their sleeve, tears in their eyes, letting life batter them until there’s nothing left.  
  
No one would survive, Jensen thinks; how could anyone survive this? It’s incredible that Jared did for so long on his own.  
  
He opens his mouth to tell Jared that, how strong he is, how he has to keep fighting and never give up.  
  
Jensen wants to paint him a picture of a happier life, but it’s not a picture that Jensen even knows how to draw himself.  
  
He opens his mouth to give it his best try when he smells it, the undertone of plumerias in the air, the white color of a tuxedo, the sound of a scratchy cassette tape.  
  
_Someday you will find me  
Caught beneath the landslide  
in a champagne supernova  
in the sky_  
  
“But you always find me,” Jared says, just on the cusp of sleep, the sensation mixed with alcohol pulling Jensen down with him, “Just when I need you most. You come and find me.”  
  
The worst part of it all is how badly Jensen wants to stay forever, just like Jared had asked. He wants to stay in this memory, fall asleep drunk with Jared’s sweaty forehead on his chest and their legs tangled together and he wants to wake up with a raging hangover and not be able to tell who’s got it worse of the two of them.  
  
He wants all of that, and all the memories after that point with Jared, because Jared feels more in a second of his life than Jensen has felt in a very long time. All he wants is to stay, but he can feel the space of another memory, of his memory, Calling him away.  
  
“You’re singing that song again,” Jared slurs into Jensen’s shoulder.  
  
If Jensen could just touch him, just let him know how badly he doesn’t want to go.  
  
_But you keep floating up,_  Jensen thinks crazily, _I think of you and I think of you but you keep floating up, just out of reach._  
  
He wakes up at the end of the session, a standard two hour mapping, but it takes him thirty minutes of resting with eyes closed until he can even sit up within the basin, and another fifteen minutes after that to maneuver himself back into his wheelchair, and ask Gen in a level headed voice to cancel his appointments for the rest of the day so he can recover. He’s more exhausted than he’s felt in years.  
  
His wrists sting with the sensation of razors across flesh, but there is no scar to speak of whatsoever.


	3. Chapter 3

 

After days like today, Jensen is more grateful than ever that he has the aviary.  
  
There are enough birds gathered when he rolls in on the garden pathway that he doesn’t feel the need to get the bird seed out to call them hither. He can hear the twittering all the way from the house, a harmonious outcry that contrasts in mood with the grey of the sky.  
  
He never loved birds, but he found a reason to want them around. The aviary wasn’t what he built but it is what he kept, what he tends to above any other part of his grounds. He never found the purpose in locking the birds in, so it stays open; Gen fills the feeders each morning, and Jensen checks them each night before bed.  
  
It’s not bedtime for quite a few hours, but Jensen’s content to wait for a few hours until it is time.  
  
Donald and Daffy, the two ducks that always fly down from the coast, are nestled together when he enters, squawking their annoyance by way of greeting. He nods at them, and despite the fact that he is not a bird by way of communication, their beady eyes somehow seem to get whatever he’s saying.  
  
Naming the birds was not Jensen’s idea; he’d like to emphasize that he’d actually been firmly opposed to it up until a point. But Gen had been such a zealot for  _naming_  things, making each bird some kind of personal anecdote of a background so Jensen could always tell them apart, as if Jensen couldn’t do that on his own. He knew there was a male raven that stopped by the roost every once and a while, but it wasn’t until Gen named the raven Nevermore that Jensen also knew that the raven stopped by only every few weeks, usually on the eve of a bad storm, like some nasty kind of omen, loyal to its own lore. He knew he had two hummingbirds that flew and bickered together, often at the same time, but it wasn’t until Gen called them Flick and Mumble that Jensen realized they were mates, the shier Mumble always lagging just behind the speedy Flick as they darted about the sugar water feeder.  
  
It had just been those few at first, the regulars, Nevermore and Flick and Mumble. But not too far after came Daffy and Donald, then Hedwig on full moons to roost in the rafters, and Scuttle and Orville whenever a storm was blowing just off shore. Woody and Woodstock were siblings as far as Jensen knew, and their favorite thing to do was take control of one of the seed bowls like the goddamn Aviary Mafia. That’s what Gen called them, the fucking Bird Mafia, and Jensen would be lying if he said it didn’t make him crack a smile every time she said it.  
  
He could spend eons out here, sitting here, listening to the feather soft rustle of wings and the occasional coos and tweets as they duck in and out of the rafters and the abandoned nests. Given the choice Jensen wishes he could move to and from where he pleased, gliding on nothing but air and will instead of wheels and well-practiced hands. There were newcomers in the aviary, there always were, but Jensen began already picking out names for the yellow finches, the blue jays. He’s just named the lone swallow Jacquimo when Gen enters, tottering underneath the weight of a giant bag of bird seed.  
  
“I made dinner,” she wheezes, setting the bag down.  
  
“You didn’t have to.”  
  
“Correction: I made a box of Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese that I’ll finish all on my own because you’re lactose intolerant. But I can pull out some cereal with almond milk if you want it.”  
  
Jacquimo swoops from the highest rafter out the open walls of the aviary, Jensen strokes the lighter patch of skin on his finger where his wedding band used to be. “I’m good.”  
  
Together they watch Woodstock preen and scoot away from the squabbling finches. Nevermore sits in the highest roost, watching, appearing to wait for something. He croaks when Jensen makes eye contact with him, the murky shine of his partially blind eyes locking on Jensen, even from yards away. There’s something about that gnarled old crow that Jensen feels an odd kindred spirit with; the things been weathered and beaten: its beak is chipped and crooked, its left foot missing a toe, its eyes nearly grey with blindness. But it’s always there when Jensen expects to see it the most, after a bad day or before an exhausting one.  
  
The fact that Jensen relates more to a bird than he does to most humans probably says something about him. He’d rather not consider it.  
  
Gen opens her mouth, then closes it, and he can hear her formulating the right question.  
  
She settles, rather, for the simplest one, not because she thinks Jensen will give the truthful answer, but rather the opposite.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
And it’s because he knows she’s expecting the lie that he gives her the truth. “I’ve been worse.”  
  
“The patient’s really fucked up, isn’t he.”  
  
“His emotions are proving to be…surprisingly strong.”  
  
Genevieve pauses, then, “How strong, exactly. Is he—“  
  
“I’ve got it under control.”  
  
“Like hell you do,” Gen snaps, “You’ve barely eaten since you did the diagnostic on the patient. He’s getting in your head, Jensen, and before you know it, he’s gonna leave a damn fingerprint—“  
  
“You know last time I checked, I was the head doctor with the PhD here.”  
  
“Yet I’m the only one who seems to have any brain cells left.”  
  
“I don’t recall there being a rule about giving up when the going gets tough.”  
  
“No, but there is a rule about control. Knowing when a person’s salvageable, and knowing when there’s nothing left in the wreckage of their mind to salvage.”  
  
Gen’s right, goddammit; Jensen knows she is, but as long as he’s alive he’ll never admit it. There is something in Jared that is  _alive_ , and regardless of how small and fragile that part is, it’s something worth saving.  
  
“He can be saved,” Jensen says in clipped, concise tone. “There’s no rule that says I’m not allows to try and save my patient until the last possibility of doing so has run out.”  
  
“Oh bull _shit_ —“  
  
“You didn’t write the rules, Genevieve.”  
  
“No. I didn’t. But I sat and learned from the bastard who did. You taught me those rules, you taught me control. So I’m just here to remind you of the necessity of that.”  
  
“Gen--,” he says in a warning tone.  
  
“You don’t want this, Jensen. You don’t want this kid to end up like me or, God forbid, Lisa—“  
  
Jensen shoots an icy look in her direction, Gen ducks her head apologetically.  
  
Nevermore still stares at him from the rafters. Jensen no longer has the energy to stare him down, returns to thumbing at his empty ring finger.  
  
“Why do you need to save this one, Jensen? Why him?”  
  
That’s the question Jensen’s been trying to find an answer to himself. He doesn’t know. He just knows he has to.  
  
Jensen stares at her, scooping into her early twenties but still not looking a day older than when he first walked the route of her mind, sixteen and terrified and alone.  
  
She’s braver now, definitely mouthier, but still standoffish. Maybe that’s the reason Jensen decides to keep her around. Because he knows that underneath the compassion she’s got just as much of a self-preservation obsession as he does. Better safe than sorry. Better alone than abandoned.  
  
“He cares so much. This damn kid cares  _so much_  and I don’t get it. I don’t get why. And even though he gave up I can feel him fighting. He wants to live, Gen, I know it.”  
  
“ _Does_  he want to live? Or are you making him want to live?”  
  
He can only hear wind in the pines and wings when he closes his eyes, and he lets that sound be the answer to Genevieve’s question.  
  
By the time he opens his eyes again, he’s alone in the aviary. The rest of the birds have fled with the sun, all but Nevermore, scratching at his beak and rumbling with a death rattle of a croak.  
  
\--  
  
“I hate school.”  
  
“School is good for you.”  
  
“Brown noser.”  
  
“Slacker.”  
  
Jared’s wrist flicks and the football he’d been holding flies. Jensen feels the brush of annoyance glance off as soon as the ball smacks him straight in the face, sending Jared into a cackle of laughter that gallops off into Jensen’s memories, tucked and saved.  
  
“Whatever. I don’t need school anyhow.”  
  
Jensen grins, feeling the skin on a younger, more pre-pubescent face tighten. “What are you going to do? Start a band?”  
  
“I don’t know. Something that isn’t a desk job, a wife and three kids, and alcoholism some ten years after that.” Jared shrugs, settles his hands on his stomach and tapping his fingers and although Jensen is sitting several feet away he can feel the tap of Jared’s fingers against his own abdomen, the warmth of his palms on his skin. “I think traveling would be fun, you know? Saving up enough money and then just….going international. Until I find a place where I could see myself starting a life.”  
  
“You don’t see yourself staying here forever?” Jensen can’t see why not, the air smells like ocean salt and strawberry sweet, and the sun is everywhere.  
  
“Dude, do I look like a California-born surfer bro to you?”  
  
Jared does not. Jared looks like a scrawny bean plant that’s spent way too much time in the sun and not enough time eating, nut brown skin and skinny limbs. If he tried to go surfing, Jared looks waifish enough that Jensen would be worried he’d drown.  
  
Jared looks like something, now that Jensen knows exactly what Jared looks like, who he’ll be, how his smile will shape around his teeth, how he’ll stand to stretch and his fingertips might brush the doorframe he’s standing in. For now Jared looks like a beanpole with a sunburn. But Jensen knows one day he’ll look like something, alright.  
  
“What?” Jared balls up a dirty sock and throws it in Jensen’s direction. “Why are you looking at me that way?”  
  
When Jensen doesn’t respond, Jared shrugs and goes back to staring at his ceiling, covered with pictures of world maps, far off places. “I’m gonna be somebody someday. I will.”  
  
And Jensen says nothing. Because Jensen knows ten years down the road Jared Padalecki is going to walk right off the roof of a beaten down apartment that he shares with no one, and that the only reason he survives is sheer dumb luck that he doesn’t crack his skull open, not because anyone was there to talk him down from the roof, or try and break his fall.  
  
“Yeah, Jared, you will.”  
  
“And you, you’ll come with me, right?”  
  
Jensen feels his legs throb with sudden numbness and he forces himself to recognize reality. But it’s just as easy to pretend it doesn’t exist, that reality. It is far better to stay here with Jared, linger in the solace of those adolescent dreams untainted by the bitter pill that always seems to come in higher dosage the longer one is alive.  
  
“You want me?”  
  
“You’re kind of like, the only friend I have who is cool enough. You know that, right?”  
  
“Okay.” Jensen says, feeling small, insignificant, lower than dirt. He knows, ideally, that Jared will remember none of this; mindmap patients never do. He knows Jared will wake up and go back to his empty apartment with his barking dogs and not think once about Jensen. A good man would be glad for it. A bad man would wish Jared would remember.  
  
Jensen is a very bad man.  
  
In some small part of his mind Jensen knows he’s going to hate himself when all this is over, that he’s going to subsist on self-loathing and sleepless nights for months to come. Jensen can deal with that, because God knows he’s dealt with worse. So he turns to the sunbeams slanting through the window and rather focuses on the way the mattress pillows about Jared’s head, the way it feels.  
  
But before he can react, he feels the space around them changing, shifting, a never ending myriad of colors spinning until Jensen practically feels the g-force even though he’s not moving at all.  
  
He’s in a loft, a dingy apartment with a box spring mattress. He can see the space needle outside. And he can see Jared, shirtless and flushed, lying back in bed and—  
  
“Jesus!” Jared scrambles to cover himself. “Jensen, knock why don’t you, I didn’t even hear you—“  
  
“Sorry,” Jensen blurts, scrambling to keep with the rapid change in appearance; they’re twenty, maybe twenty one in this memory, Jensen can see five o’clock shadow on Jared’s face, larger muscles in once slender shoulders. “I’m going I just—“  
  
Jensen’s gaze catches on a box of what looks to be condoms and stops, his earlier tightened stomach exploding.  
  
“Are you…expecting someone?” Jensen’s voice shoots up.  
  
“Sh!” Jared turns an ever guiltier and deeper shade of red. “He’s washing up in the bathroom and I just—“  
  
“Oh god.” Jensen backs out hurriedly. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—“  
  
There’s a moment, Jensen swears he might even hallucinate it, the split second where Jared’s eyes flick over to the bathroom, then back over to Jensen. A split second, but long enough for Jared to sit up, looking embarrassed, reaching for his discarded shirt on the floor.  
  
“No! No it’s okay,” Jared says, all placating, “That can—that can wait. I’ll get some clothes on, we’ll grab a coffee.”  
  
Considering Jared’s general state of foreplay flush and nakedness, this doesn’t exactly seem like something that can wait, but Jensen’s too flustered to speak, and Jared only has eyes for him.  
  
Jensen is pretty sure he missed some kind of important moment here, but he’s not entirely sure what it was.  
  
“I—“  
  
“C’mon,” says Jared, “Stephen likes you—“  
  
Stephen. The fucker that dumped Jared what feels like just seconds ago, even though he knows, in this timeline, it must not have happened yet. Jensen’s stomach rolls in its own waste, a corpse in its grave.  
  
Jensen goes to get the fuck out of that memory as first as he can, but he’s past the door and out the hallway and there’s no pushing out of the wall. He can’t escape the memory. He’s stuck.  
  
“Who were you talking to?”  
  
“Oh, my brother called, he’s in a layover on his way to Italy.” Jensen feels the lie come easily, and hates that he knows well enough by now that Jared’s brother probably doesn’t call, period. “C’mere…”  
  
He hears it then, the unmistakable smack of lips, soft but firm, quick, eager.  
  
“What do you want?” The guy, Stephen, says.  
  
“Want you.” Jared says the words with sincerity, a gentleness that Jensen has never heard before but wants to collect the scraps of, a tone just a few edges bold of whispering. Sweet and earnest.  
  
Jensen stares at the door knob with all the concentration he’s got in him, memorizes the curve and the fingerprints because he doesn’t want to hear what’s happening right now. He doesn’t want to know what’s happening on the other side of the door. He recites the periodic table, rattles off chemical compounds and lists that years in middle school ingrained into his brain, uses them like cheap card tricks, for distraction, for amusement, because he’s all too aware of what is happening right there, right inside that bedroom.  
  
Time may pass, Jensen’s really not aware of it until there’s a noise that snaps him back to fully attentive. Jensen doesn’t know how to describe it, but he knows without rhyme or reason that it’s the sound of that guy—Stephen, whoever the fuck that was—bottoming out inside Jared. And Jensen can hear everything. Jensen presses himself up against the insulation cover of the memory willing it to just absorb him like a cell, let him pass through in whatever fucked up osmosis necessary needed to get out of here.  
  
This is sick. This is sick and fucked up and Jensen is fucked up for being here and Jensen is fucked up for not being able to leave and for wanting to stay. Sweat and slick and sex, it’s all on the other side of that door, and Jensen is so far out of control he’s choking with it. Each breath he takes is an inhale closer to the beat of Jared’s heart, the clench of his stomach muscles as something whole and terrifying begins to shiver through him. Jensen can’t feel everything—he can’t feel how full Jared is, how wanting Jared is—but Jensen’s mind paints the whole picture for him. He knows the gasps Jared’s making, open mouthed and surprised, just like he does right before he bursts out laughing. He knows the color of Jared’s cheeks, they match with memories of shame, excitement. Jensen’s mind’s got it all, and in no time he’s perfectly pieced together just what is happening on the other side of that door, and is well on his way to imagining that it’s him doing the fucking, instead of the perverted listening in the hallway.  
  
“Oh god.” Jared, again, and Jensen can feel it, slow, but building in intensity. And it’s terrifying. Jensen needs to get out of here, before he knows, with complete and utter certainty, what it feels like to have someone come inside him.  
  
If Jared leaves that thumbprint, Jensen is sure he won’t ever recover. There’s no coming back from that.  
  
Jensen was the one who named it the Calling, mostly because it was the only thing that fit, mostly because there was really no word in the English language that existed like it. A Calling was nothing more than a strong memory, the strongest memory, tied to the basest sense of identity. Like a dial tone, like an alarm startling someone out of their sleep. The Calling is the most integral part of mind mapping, for it’s a mapper’s center, their identity. Without a calling, one is lost amongst someone else’s memories, awash in a tide that is useless to fight against.  
  
Everyone has one. A snatch of dialogue, a song, a sensation, a specific and impossible to imitate memory that is unique to no other mind but their own.  
  
Jensen uses his Calling then, prays for his memory to rush at him faster than it is, waits for that tell-tale tug on his wrist to signal his removal from the memory. He firmly and vehemently tells himself he doesn’t want to be there, but with every second he hears the sounds that Jared is making on the other side of that wall that resolve is crumbling.  
  
_Some day you will find me,_  Jensen thinks, prays, really, humming under his breath, staring at the black space of the maze, willing himself to osmoses straight through the memory into freedom, back to running in the opposite direction of the sensation building in his gut, stuttering out his heart like a broken carburetor.  _Caught beneath the landslide._  
  
The loose thread wrapped around his wrist gives the gentlest tug, no harsher than a small child yanking at his sleeve, and then the memory tears apart like an open wound, floating up to a surface that Jensen can’t reach, weighted down by the thread, the song, the voice all around him, the smell of fresh plumerias in the air, of a black tux and---  
  
The rush of sensation hits him like a sucker punch, and he feels split in two with it just as his eyes open, thumbprinting Jared’s orgasm somewhere along the base of his own spine.  
  
He’s in deep. He’s in too fucking deep and he knows it.  
  
\--  
  
The procedure had, from the very beginning, been Jensen's idea. Mind mapping, the whole shebang, had been his bastardized idea of how to save lives, as a kid who got into medical school way too early and had seen  _Inception_  way too many times.  
  
A standard procedure is like a slightly more complicated Easter Egg Hunt, as Murray likes to describe it. Mapper goes into the maze, traverses through the memories, experiences everything first hand, like an extra in a movie. No interaction, no inclusion, just an aimless drift through the patient’s own experiences.  
  
It had started as a simple idea. There were plenty of healthy people all over the globe in comas; most doctors said all they’d have to do to be perfectly fine was wake up. So, amidst a fuckton of medical school and sleepless nights, Jensen devised a procedure to help speed up that process. Remind the patient of why they needed to wake up, why they wanted to live.  
  
It was a quick enough process. Get in, get out. View the memories, find the patient in the Center of their mind, and give them a way of getting back. Give them a Call.  
  
The Call was the only way of getting out of the maze. You could either Call yourself out or be Called out via stimulation from the outside world. Your Call was essentially tied down to one very specific detail of one very specific memory, and as long as you were called, you were able to find a way back into your own mind, your own reality. That was the textbook definition of it.  
  
Throwing people into the mix, volatile patients with wayward emotions, is what made it a helluva lot more complicated.  
  
Jensen’s job was to help the patient pick their own Call, their own literalized tie leading them back to life, back out of the maze. By the time he gets to the center of a patient’s mind, he’s seen the majority of their most important memories. He knows what to prompt them to think of, what resonates with them the most. They pick their own detail, their own Call, and it appears, a single thread tied loosely around the wrist, with the weight of an entire memory grounding it. The threads were memories, and each thread was made stronger not by the specificity of the memory, or the events of it, but rather by the emotion of it, the feel. As complicated as that sounded, threads didn’t cause too much trouble; they only physicalized when a Calling was happening, or when the memory itself was being affected. The thread doesn’t tangle or catch on passing objects, but it’s always there: a loose but inescapable tie to the surface above.  
  
Most patients were simple. High emotions usually stuck to landmark memories. A first kiss. A sweet sixteen. A job promotion. So it often didn’t take long to find the happiest memory, the strongest memory, and get the patient to tie themselves to it, use it as their thread to lead them out of the maze.  
  
Jared, however, is proving to be just a bit more complicated. The happiness is fleeting, and not permanent enough to possibly become a Calling. Jensen, in all his years, has never seen anything like it.  
  
The boy who feels everything, but holds on to none of it, keeps none of it. Emotions come and go so quickly, but not enough to change the path Jared’s on, not enough to keep him grounded. He’s exceptionally alone in his own mind, and there are few memories Jensen encountered that were shared with other people, and rarely people he directly cared about. Which made Jared’s unorthodox interactions with Jensen all the more disconcerting. Had there been someone to talk to Jared before Jensen had invaded his mind, or was it empty silence, continuous space?  
  
Finding Jared a Call, a thread to tie himself to, may be harder than Jensen previously thought at the beginning of all this.  
  
There’s a sickness in Jared’s mind that permeates the memory the deeper Jensen gets. Carbon monoxide in essence, tasteless, colorless, odorless, and before too long, it’s poisoning Jensen. And that, that feels different from how Jensen feels about Jared. Jared’s in Jensen’s head like a catchy tune, a nostalgic memory that never leaves. Jared’s sickness—the depression that lead him to try to kill himself—that goes straight to Jensen’s bloodstream, drugging him, festering in the walls of his cells, in the marrow of his bones.  
  
This thing, this sickness, it’s in Jared. It’s in his mind and his heart and it damaged the two enough to get into his body and break that too. And even now, with Jensen doing everything he can, there’s no removing it from Jared’s body, from his mind, or from his memories.  
  
He tries. He exhausts himself just trying. But what began as a quest out of genuine curiosity and care for the person Jared is, has become an obsession, a desperate need to know  _who_  Jared is,  _how_  he ticks,  _why_  he feels the way he does. And the worst part of it is, Jensen’s not even sure he can chalk that need to know up to a doctor’s love for knowledge anymore. In fact, after the incident with Stephen and the wall, Jensen’s sure he can’t. He’s got no ground to stand on, just the will to go deeper.  
  
Time spent in Jared’s head becomes, as quickly as it began, a series of images and memories that fade and blur into one another, the perfectly edited film that Jensen could watch over and over again, and does replay whenever he’s out in the real world. They serve as just as much of an escape from his body as the sound of fluttering wings do, and many a night he lies awake with restless legs that won’t move, replaying those memories. It’s a goddamn perfect film, a fucking award winning screenplay with perfect edits and emotion, the structure ever changing, the scenes switching in and out, reordering themselves every time Jensen closes his eyes and thinks ‘Jared.’  
  
This memory starts here, but where it ends up leaves Jensen’s head spinning.  
  
The camera in Jared’s hands is bulky and clunky but his fingers know their way around it, turning knobs pressing buttons, sticking in a roll of film.  
  
“C’mon, Jensen, just one.”  
  
Jensen glances down at himself, at pajama bottoms and socked feet on the shitty linoleum and sighs, exasperated. “I’m hardly in my glamour look right now.”  
  
“Exactly. This collection isn’t about the glamour. I’m capturing the world as I know it.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, and what part of the world does that make me?”  
  
“The part that’s a pain in my ass,” Jared says, but he’s smiling fondly before saying, “Look, I even brought coffee. Now lean against the counter and drink it and shut up.”  
  
Jensen leans, pushing the mug against the meat of his bottom lip, testing the temperature, eyeing the cracks along the ceiling. This is the same apartment where Jared cut himself, but the walls and ceiling space are full of photographs, strung up so Jensen can barely see the ceiling itself. He wonders how many of these he’s in, without even knowing it.  
  
“Good,” Jared says softly, “hold that pose.”  
  
Jensen can see, in the photographs, a common theme. There’s a rooftop, and thousands of birds fluttering in and out of the frame, and even from this distance Jensen can see it.  
  
The only place he’d seen so many birds in one area was in the aviary, and that was his and his alone. Jared had never been to the aviary; Jared did not exist out of the mind in which Jensen knew him, intimately. No one knows about Jensen’s obsession with birds except for Gen. Jared doesn’t know; Jared couldn’t know.  
  
He looks over at Jared, lips tugging in a smile, just as the camera shutters with a sharp  _click_  and the  _flash_  punctuates the room like lightning.  
  
The memory changes.  
  
They’re in a field. The grass is patchy and dying in spots but Jared snatches up a lone dandelion, holds it up so the sprigs tickle Jensen’s nose with the hope of spring.  
  
“Make a wish.” Jared grins, and holds the camera up when Jensen takes it from his fingers. It’s the same size as the hot sun overhead and when Jensen blows the dandelion bursts apart.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re in a movie theater bickering about what to go see and when Jensen reaches over for the drenched-in-butter popcorn. Jared’s fingers are just as oily and salty as his own taste. Jared’s wearing a plaid blue scarf and a beanie that makes his hair lie flat. It’d look ridiculous on anyone else, but the hat and scarf in the dark movie theater is somehow endearing, like Jared’s got no idea how to dress himself so he just kind of throws it all on. Jensen ducks his smile behind another handful of popcorn.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re in a kitchen bathed in light, and Jared is sifting through a soggy bowl of Lucky Charms, salvaging only the pots of gold and rainbows from the milk to pop into his mouth one by one. Jensen doesn’t know the day, the year, how long they’ve known each other, but Jared looks up and gives him a soft smile, and Jensen can taste the bits of marshmallow still being chewed and feel the boogers from sleep at the corner of Jared’s fox eyes and Jensen, despite himself, wants to cross the space of that cramped kitchen.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re by the ocean, like many times before, and sprinting through sand that pulls at their feet like mire. They’re by the ocean and Jared runs, screaming his head off, into a flock of gulls picking through dead seaweed and sand crabs above the tide. The birds take flight, flying farther and farther and in the midst of flurry of motion are the two of them, laughter ricocheting in Jensen’s ribs and he doesn’t know whose it is. In the flicker and flutter and wings, Jared slips in and out of sight, Jensen catching only glimpses of his smile, the sun baked look of his skin. He’s out of reach but Jensen can feel the wild heartbeat and the throat tight with screams. It feels like Jared’s heartbeat, but Jensen’s pulse seems to match. He catches the full force of Jared’s smile directed at him, and that pulse—his pulse, Jensen realizes a bit late—picks up impossibly faster, thudding harder than their feet in the sand.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re in a cemetery and the grave reads  _Megan Renée Padalecki_  and Jared doesn’t say a word, just folds to his knees and curls his fingers in the damp grass, not so far off from the little kid who’d done the same in the mud piles of his backyard. The tremor in Jared’s lungs telegraphs through Jensen’s entire frame, an internal earthquake springing straight from his heart. They sit like that for a long time.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re in a dark bedroom, laying on their backs and staring at the ceiling. A car honks outside. Jensen can barely make out Jared’s profile as he says sleepily, “You could always crash here. I’m happy to let you stay.”  
  
“I have work,” Jensen whispers into the black.  
  
“Stay.”  
  
He stays until Jared’s asleep, and then he stays some more.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re on the ferry in the bay, and wind is pushing up through Jared’s hair, and his nose is pink from cold, fingers white knuckling the railing. Jensen knows, somehow by this point, that Jared’s afraid of being on open water where his feet can’t touch the ocean floor. Maybe that’s why he butts his shoulder against Jared’s, giving something to lean against. Maybe that’s why he whispers it’s going to be okay.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re in a doctor’s office and Jared is crying, wrapping his arms up and over his head like an umbrella and crying. His lip is busted again and there are stitches across his head. Jensen’s flutter about him, unsure of how to heal or what to do and Jared’s alive, thankfully so, but the boot print bruises throb with a want for dying. “I’m not going anywhere,” Jensen says, even though Jared never even asked if he’d stay. Jared leans into Jensen like he wants to crawl into his skin as if to escape the pain. Jensen presses closer and all he can think about is how he’d be damn willing to try.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re on a merry-go-round and Jared’s singing “Champagne Supernova” at the top of his lungs, none of the correct lyrics but all of the right tune, swinging off the back of a gilded stallion that goes up and down and up and down.  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
They’re driving, on a road to nowhere and Jensen’s got shotgun and Jared is smiling. Looking, for all the world, as peaceful as Jensen’s ever seen him. “You’ll like Seattle,” Jared says. “We’ll like it.”  
  
_Click. Flash._  
  
Each memory ends same as the last. Jensen begins to go, and Jared asks him to stay, in a gesture, in a question, in a wayward smile. And it gets harder, every goddamn time, to extract himself from Jared’s mind. The memories do not release him anymore, they play out their entire run, leaving Jensen spinning and scrabbling for purchase in the waste of Jared’s emotions.  
  
They’re everywhere and nowhere and all that’s in between. The places begin to not matter as much to Jensen as much as the events, the feelings, the shape of Jared’s mouth and whether it’s pulled around a frown or a laugh. They are seventeen, then five, then twenty, then nine, then seventeen all over again, Jensen loses track. He thinks rather in emotions, in thoughts, in how often he can taste whatever’s on Jared’s tongue, feel whatever’s pressing or scratching against his skin.  
  
What fascinates Jensen, what sends him reminiscing or mulling over for hours on end, isn’t the fact of these sensations but the process of them. Everything makes Jared feel; there’s no experience or thought that feels mundane. His emotions, while not extreme, exist in a constant state of flux, a hardcore drug that is both upper and downer at once, drumming up sensations Jensen has never known he was capable of, thoughts and feelings that, in Jensen’s line of age and experience, he thought he’d already been there and done that.  
  
Jensen read once, in some prestigious medical journal somewhere, that there are colors that the human eye cannot perceive. The colors are still there, they still exist, but the human eye, and the human brain, cannot process them.  
  
Jared’s got those extra colors, those sensations that Jensen knew existed, had heard enough about, but never imagined they’d be this intense, this beautiful, this tragic.


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

The thread tied around Jensen’s wrist begins to feel frayed as the weeks go on, like the more time he spends amongst Jared’s thoughts, the weaker that connection to other thoughts becomes. The Call still works when they use it, and he still follows the insistent tug, but he’s reluctant these days, dreading surfacing to a word without a certain pair of dimples, a head of shaggy hair.  
  
He has reached the point where he doesn’t need to seek permission to enter Jared’s head, doesn’t need to cloak himself in sensation and memory to slip through the crack of the door and enter. Jared’s mind welcomes Jensen with open arms, nearly beckons to him, with a warm push of air and a sweet smelling breeze that seems to hold  _come find me, come find me, come find me,_  as an afterthought.  
  
Jensen’s never been in a mind as welcoming as this. He should feel grateful, but by this point the thought only serves to make him nervous, yank tighter the knot that’s been twining in his gut since the moment Jared saw him.  
  
He no longer navigates Jared’s mind, he isn’t able to. Jared’s mind injects and rejects him to whatever memories it chooses, without timeline or connection or train of thought. A maze once navigable is now a rushing current that Jensen can’t bother to swim against. The thought is absolutely crazy, but sometimes it feels as if Jared is using Jensen to fill up the empty spaces in his mind, like mental Mad Libs with Jensen as every noun, verb, and adjective in the blanks. Most of their interactions are at times where Jared is alone, or at least away from prying eyes. They are always tucked in the more intimate corners of Jared’s memory, his bedroom, the less crowded beaches of Ventura, running along the rows of the strawberry fields, fog in their eyes, sea salt tang on their tongues.  
  
Years of meditation and practice had meant Jensen had dreamless sleep, a black ribbon of silence of slumber. But now, every night after spending time in Jared’s mind, Jensen dreams, vividly, viscerally. Jensen sweats through the sheets and wakes with tears on his face. They’re not his tears, but he feels the protesting ache against them in his throat, his sinuses.  
  
It’s getting out of control; Jensen’s in far too deep. He’s in too deep and he doesn’t fucking care.  
  
He won’t stop, though. Not until Jared is safe from himself, able to run and stretch and live in the present time. No one who thinks and feels as much as Jared does deserves to be locked inside themselves.  
  
Jared’s got to live.  
  
Jared  _has_  to live.  
  
\---  
  
  
The memories get longer, not so much a demo reel as much as they are a full length feature, no cuts between the scenes, and Jensen knows, this is not how it’s supposed to go. He should be able to walk the maze, pick and choose the memories he situates himself in, decide which he wants to see. He’s strung along rather than allowed the choice of where he’d like to go.  
  
But Jared’s mind pulls him from memory to memory, stronger than a Call, stronger than anything Jensen’s ever known. The only difference is a recurring question every time Jensen visits Jared, just before he’s yanked into another memory. Jared asks him to stay. Every time, without fail, no matter what the situation, whether Jared’s laughing or crying or bleeding or sleeping. He asks Jensen to stay, like somehow he knows Jensen can’t stick around forever, like somehow he knows this is all about to come to an end, one day.  
  
There is an end to this maze, there always is. What Jensen wasn’t prepared for was the near dread for that end.  
  
The want to linger in the recesses of Jared’s mind seems to fuck with everything else, and he wakes up from each session more exhausted than the last, like his body is willing him to close his eyes and sink back in to Jared’s mind. Reality is reality, but Jensen is learning more often than not that reality does not hold those things which he truly wants, so he blurs the lines where he can, fills silences and pauses and awkward stretches of time from dawn to dusk with the sound of Jared’s voice, with the shape of his dimpled smile.  
  
It’s better than dreaming, better than the best dream he’s ever had, thinking of Jared. He’d call it nostalgia but there’s no bitter sweetness in something that never existed in the first place. It’s the wispy cotton candy of fantasy, of indulgence and loss in someone else’s self, and, oh, how he craves it.  
  
Jensen knows it’s romanticizing, whatever this pondering is he’s allowing himself. But he lets himself have it, with the comfort that soon it’ll all be over, and the sensation and emotion, the first he’s felt in years, will slip away with it.  
  
“I saw your light was on at four am. Did you sleep last night?” Genevieve asks over a weekend brunch, and Jensen ignores her.  
  
_“Stay?” Jared asks, after they’ve spent a rainy afternoon doing homework at the foot of Jared’s bed. And Jensen does. What’s five more minutes?_  
  
“When was the last time you’ve been to therapy?” Gen whispers when he lifts himself out of the basin again, trembling with the exertion.  
  
_“Stay with me,” Jared says, a shy blush creeping into the apples of his cheeks, “I’ve got a batch of cookies in the oven and I’m pretty sure I’ll die if I try to eat them myself.” What’s a few cookies and some milk? Jensen stays._  
  
“Is the patient happy?” Genevieve asks one night over dinner. “I mean, he seems to be struggling with waking up. Is he happy or sad?”  
  
_“Stay with me,” Jared says, wrapping his chubby kid fingers up in Jensen’s, knees grubby from backyard dirt and sun wrought sweat. “Stay and play just a little longer. You can play with my trucks…” What was a little longer? Jensen stays._  
  
“I think the issue, rather, is that he’s knows the difference between the two,” Jensen says slowly, “And knows what it means to have lost one completely while being stuck in the other.”  
  
_“It’s warmer in here,” Jared whispers, under a tent of sheets that should feel silly but really just feels intimately raw and tentative. Jared’s smile is lazy with sleep and morning lethargy, “Stay till the snow stops falling.” What’s a little bit of warmth while snow falls outside? Jensen stays._  
  
“Jensen!” Gen shouts in the aviary, causing Nevermore and a few of the other birds to squawk angrily and flutter about, nervous at the outburst. “I’ve been talking to you for a solid minute; did you hear a single word I just said?”  
  
_Jensen stays. Jensen stays and Jensen stays and Jensen can’t imagine ever wanting to leave, sun or rain, good memories and bad. Jensen stays through it all._  
  
But maybe, it’s the staying that leads everything to fall to shit at the bitter end.  
  
\--  
  
Sore. Jensen’s eyes are still closed in a haze of barely awake but he feels sore before he so much as moves from his bed. It’s everywhere, a warm ache that isn’t entirely unpleasant, attached to a strange twinge of fondness as it tingles up along his forearms, his core, his thighs. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be sore in his legs. It’s a soreness that reminds of him of nights in his earlier years at Medical School, when classes were cancelled or rain was pouring from the sky and he and Lisa had nothing better to do than remove their clothes and—  
  
The notion of her name, her honeyed skin against his, brings reality back with a brutal clap and Jensen’s eyes snap open and he swings up in his bed, glancing around wildly.  
  
This is not his room. This is not his bed. This is not his memory.  
  
This is not his memory but Jensen is naked just the same.  
  
He barely glances over his shoulder before he knows what’s going on.  
  
“Fuck,” Jensen breathes, dragging a hand over day old stubble. It doesn’t take a genius to put together the pieces: the soreness of his muscles, the nakedness, the disaster of a bed with the sheets all tangled.  
  
It’s a nightmare. This is worse than anything Jensen could ever dream up, the image of Jared lifting his head—sleepy, sated—and smiling at Jensen with the most lopsided, unabashed smile he’s ever seen.  
  
“Mornin’,” Jared grins, stretching out to the four corners of the bed and letting out a groan as his joints crack and his muscles stretch. It’s a good feeling, it’s the best feeling, and Jensen knows it because he feels it too. The well-used bliss of someone who recently had spectacular sex.  
  
_Fuck._  
  
It’s the look on Jared’s face that does it, and Jensen can’t be playing this game anymore. Whatever pond he’s chosen to tread through has turned out to be a fucking abyss to which there is no bottom.  _This isn’t real,_  Jensen steels himself to think, forcing on his boxers, yanking a t-shirt over his head that he can’t be sure is Jared’s or his own, horrified by the fact that he can no longer the difference between his clothes and Jared’s.  _This isn’t real._  
  
This isn’t real because Jensen, no matter what he may or may not just be considering to desire, never fucked Jared. Hell, they’ve never even  _kissed._ Apart from spur of the moment and urgent statements of affection and need, Jensen’s never done a single thing but be there when Jared needed him, stayed when Jared asked him.  
  
Was Jensen replacing another character in the midst of Jared’s life? Was this a one night stand Jared had had with some other guy? Why was Jensen here? Why was Jensen naked and hurrying out to his walk of shame?  
  
The answers to those questions don’t much matter. The bottom line is that Jared’s mind, or maybe Jensen’s desperation to save Jared’s mind, has crossed a line he wasn’t aware existed.  
  
“Where you going, Jen?” Jared asks the question Jensen’s been dreading, but it’s the nickname that locks the sensation in Jensen’s chest. How badly he wants to stay, how badly he wants to crawl back into that bed and recall all the sensation and memory that he can’t seem to remember having experienced in the first place.  
  
But that’s wrong. Because Jensen’s a doctor. Because Jensen’s a professional. Because this isn’t  _real_.  
  
“I have to go.” Jensen shoves one foot, then the other, into his jeans, fingers yanking the button and zipper into place. “This was a mistake.”  
  
Jared sits up in the bed, the sheets pooling around his narrow hips and Jensen’s seen Jared shirtless before but there’s suddenly a context he can’t get past, an intimacy that makes Jensen want to claw his eyes out and unsee it. “Really with the clichés? I thought we’d gotten past all that nonsense last night.”  
  
Jensen shakes his head as if to clear it. “Whatever happened, I don’t want you to get any ideas, Jared.”  
  
“Ideas about what?” Jared’s tone hardens, and when he darts from the bed Jensen barely has enough energy to force his eyes closed until he hears the telltale snap of boxer elastic against skin and then Jared’s stalking towards him. “That you care about me, Jensen? That you want me? Is that such a bad thing?”  
  
“Whatever I said, it wasn’t real,” Jensen says mulishly, staring at his toes, trying to remember that Jared doesn’t even know what’s going on. Jared hasn’t got a clue who Jensen even is, what he’s done, what he’s trying to do even now.  
  
“What do you mean it isn’t real?” And then suddenly Jared’s crowding into Jensen’s space, pleading with his body, putting his hand through the unbuttoned flannel and placing a warm palm on Jensen’s chest. And just like that, another thumbprint, another thing Jensen will never forget about Jared, another thing to haunt him even in waking hours. “Don’t you feel that? How it feels to be around you, to touch you? Jensen, it’s the most real thing in my whole world.”  
  
Jared’s eyes shine with the sincerity of those words, and he means it, plain and simple. The affection and the want, it’s so palpable in the air Jensen can feel it beading on his skin like sweat.  
  
It scares him shitless, is what it does. It’s too close to before. That vulnerability, that warmth, it’s dredging up threads Jensen had long ago severed from his wrist and he just  _can’t_.  
  
“Maybe to you, Jared. But never to me.”  
  
Jared steps back, the light shuttering off his face. “But I thought—“  
  
“You thought wrong,” Jensen says the words in a hot rush of terror, because if he says anything but the utmost to get Jared away from him, he’ll never leave, he’ll never fucking leave and he’ll be perfectly fucking okay with that. He shakes his head again. “God, don’t you realize that this is your problem, Jared? The reason why you feel like this? You think everyone’s got the same heart as you, and they don’t. You give and you give and you don’t understand why people don’t give back and that’s going to make you weak fuck you up in the end, don’t you see that?”  
  
“I don’t understand.” Jared blinks, lost, still just as lost in his mind as he was the very first time Jensen met him. It’s like weeks of mind mapping has done nothing. Jensen’s no closer to helping Jared, period.  
  
“I shouldn’t be here, I have to go.” Jensen turns heel and makes for the door.  
  
“You said you loved me,” Jared sniffs, eyes wet, and the man who’d looked so tall and happy wrapped up in sheets now looks unbearably frail and small. “Last night you said it.”  
  
“Don’t put this on me,” Jensen snaps, and he doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore but he’s saying it, angrier than he’s felt in years, jabbing his finger at Jared’s chest. “You did this, you pulled me in, but not anymore. I have to go. I shouldn’t be here. I should never have stayed.”  
  
“I did this,” Jared parrots back, the words sounding bruised with hurt. He nods furtively, and it’s disturbing to Jensen how very dry his eyes are. The boy so quick to cry in any other memory is strangely numb. Jensen can’t even get an inkling of what he’s feeling or thinking right now; he’s too busy wrestling with his own screaming inside his head. He stares Jensen down. “Okay then. Fine. Leave.”  
  
The second Jensen turns for the door he’s drowning in Jared’s emotion, sharp rusty spokes in his ribs, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He has to leave, though. Get out of the apartment and Call himself out. He should have known from the second Jared first saw him that this would never work, that Jared’s mind was too lonely to not cling upon first sight.  
  
He wrenches the door open and stumbles straight onto a rooftop, the memory changing faster than the blink of an eye, the transition seamless. Nighttime. A rooftop. He can see the Space Needle in the distance.  
  
Jensen knows something’s off the second he stumbles into the memory. Most memories start with the emotion, that tug in his gut that leans him towards something permeable like  _sad_  or  _angry_  but this memory feels nothing but cold. There’s a frosty looming hopelessness on the edges of this memory, the kind he’d glimpsed a few times in other memories, when Jared cut himself, when the Padaleckis got divorced. But he’s never known this scraped raw feeling of numbness. The air is muggy and cold, the rooftop in Jared’s photographs dark.  
  
But if this is a memory, then where is Jared, where is—  
  
_Male. 24. Suicide attempt. Threw himself off a building._ Chad’s voice echoes in his ears and Jensen’s stomach plummets all the way to the pavement below.  
  
The space from Jensen to Jared is merely the length of this roof—by all accounts, not very far at all—but time and space seems to elongate itself as Jensen rushes forward,  _screaming_  Jared’s name.  
  
“Stop,” Jared whispers, the sound soft enough to be torn away by the wind but Jensen feels it rattle in his bones, along with that hopelessness. “Stop or I’ll jump.”  
  
Jensen freezes, arm uselessly outstretched.  
  
They stand there in the silence. Cars drive by down below, traffic filters in, the unwanted pre-funeral soundtrack. Jensen knows how this story ends, he knows where this all goes. But he can’t help but see the fresh cuts on Jared’s wrists, feel the shudders and shivers wracking his spine because they’re wracking Jared’s spine, and think that there’s a way to salvage this.  
  
Even though Jared wants to die. Jensen feels it, that metastasizing void in Jared’s chest that’s not so much longing as it is finality. Acceptance. Peace. The bliss found in giving in to a long fought battle, even though you’ve lost it.  
  
“You don’t get to do this,” Jensen says, “You’re not walking out on me, Padalecki.”  
  
“You jump, I jump, yeah?” Jared asks, but it’s hollow, not a hint of actual questioning.  
  
“Exactly that.”  
  
“I’ll push off the ledge if you come near me. You’re not doing shit, Jensen.”  
  
Jared leans back and looks at the sky. He’s wearing socks on his feet, there’s a hole in the left big toe as it dangles over the edge.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” Jensen asks, but he can picture the answer in a hundred different memories, in scars on wrists and hours spent outside of rooms where he wasn’t allowed. Jared never found a way to kill his sadness, nor a way to distract from it. And so it grew, until it became this: an open rooftop and a hard concrete pavement some hundred yards below.  
  
Yesterday they’d been taking photos on the beach again. Jared’s nose had gotten pink with sunburn. He’d been fifteen. What happened?  _What happened?_  “Why?” Jensen asks again, because he’s spent hours, an entire life in Jared’s mind, but has barely begun to grasp an understanding of it.  
  
Jared doesn’t answer, just leans back again and stares at empty skies. “The birds are asleep now. No flying for them.” He tips forward like a drunkard only to catch himself again, Jensen taking another lunge forward until Jared rights himself with a threatening look.  
  
“I will stay out here all night if I have to, Jared, just don’t.  _Please_  don’t.”  
  
“Don’t what?”  
  
Jensen can’t even say it‒ he can’t even think the words. It’s like a horror movie he’s seen before, and he knows when the monsters going to come out of the closest, show it’s ugly fangs, but he still fears it, dreads it.  
  
“Stay here,” Jensen begs, switching tactics. He’d never once considered how badly Jared might have needed to hear it back. “I can’t make promises about how perfect and wonderful life is going to be. But I can promise you that it is worth living. If you just come down, Jared,  _please_. Stay.”  
  
“Do you love me?” Jared asks, a rush of heated words and Jensen can  _feel_  himself wavering on that edge, of plummeting downwards.  
  
Love. Love is a word for boys who haven’t seen things worse than death, who haven’t willingly stripped the very association of that emotion and tossed it aside. Love was an emotion for people with working body parts, working hearts. Jensen has been broken for far too long to even consider love a possibility in his life.  
  
The hesitation seems to speak volumes enough. Jared turns away, Jensen scrambling behind him.  
  
“I--”  
  
“It’s alright, Jensen,” Jared sighs, the wind taking the sound away, “It’s alright. Nobody ever did.”  
  
Jensen couldn’t. He  _couldn’t_. Jared gave too much of himself so freely, believed in things like love as being reasons to live and they weren’t. They just fucked you up and made you broken inside.  
  
There’s no reason for Jared to be asking that question. They’d spent a handful of scattered moments together, snatches of memories. But he can remember, clear as rain, all of it. A beaming Jared stepping forward to get his diploma at graduation, a sullen faced Jared at the foot of an infant’s grave. But none of it’s real. So in the end it doesn’t matter what Jensen says because Jared’s going to wake up soon and he’s not going to remember a single goddamn thing.  
  
If Jensen leaves‒ if Jensen leaves, Jared will walk off that building and into oblivion. Jensen knows it.  
  
Whatever Jensen’s going to say next is going to change everything. But words fail underneath the weight of what Jensen is trying to summarize. How do you explain the feeling of being glued back together, edges jagged and chips missing but somehow making you a little more whole again? How do you explain happiness and sadness and laughter when you’d almost forgotten the very existence of them?  
  
Were there even words that would suffice for those feelings, other than ‘I love you’?  
  
Jensen opens his mouth, but he can hear, not too far off, “Champagne Supernova” playing, the familiar scent of plumerias filling the air. He can feel his thread tug his wrist back just a scant few centimeters, but it’s there, the ever present weight of a Call, beckoning him back up to the surface, to reality.  
  
He’s not ready. He has so much that Jared needs to hear, that Jared needs to understand.  
  
“Please no,” Jensen pleads to the open air, feeling his own memories rush for him, make a break for his foothold in Jared’s mind. “Not yet, it’s too soon.”  
  
“Jensen?” Jared looks worried now, and he can only imagining what’s happening, the sight of his body walking out of this memory, walking away from Jared. “Jensen, where are you going?”  
  
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jensen says, gritting his teeth and digging his heels into this memory, feeling like he’s trying to postpone a tsunami from crashing over him. Stupid fucking song and that stupid fucking memory.  
  
But then he sees her, just off of Jared’s shoulder, so far off she’s technically floating on the night air as she walks towards him, beaming, a vision in white. His arm feels like it could be wrenched out of the socket any minute with the way it’s pulling him back to other places that aren’t here.  
  
_No,_  Jensen thinks stubbornly, gritting his teeth,  _I want to stay with Jared. Let me stay._  
  
She takes a step towards him, smiling.  
  
The rooftop, the darkness, the birds flicker out of existence, tucking away Jared’s numbness with it. Jared vanishes like he was never there, and “Champagne Supernova” bursts into its first chorus.  
  
The memory rents itself apart like the sharp snap of a rubber band against his skin, tearing into the space with invisible claws as alertness gropes for Jensen where he stands. Jensen wakes thrashing, gasping and sputtering on the basin of water he’s immersed in.  
  
“No!” He screams, aware of the monitors going haywire and Genevieve screeching orders above him, but he doesn’t care. Someone’s making awful retching noises, suffocation upon drowning mixed together. Gen’s still shouting. It doesn’t matter. This surface world outside of that rooftop is all potatoes to Jensen by now because Jared’s going to kill himself, Jared’s going to throw himself off the building, Jared’s going to—  
  
Gen’s palm makes contact with his cheek in a wet  _smack_  that seems to make even his teeth chatter, but it slaps air into his lungs and sense into his brain and he sits there for a solid ten seconds, just breathing, taking in the now silent sound of the laboratory around him, accepting it as his reality, no matter how much he wishes differently.  
  
Oh. That’d been him making the retching noises. Of course.  
  
“You okay, Doc?” Chad asks.  
  
It takes a second of thought, a moment’s consideration of Jared on that rooftop, before Jensen’s back in action.  
  
“Put me back in,” Jensen snaps, jabbing the IV back into his vein and laying back into the basin, “put me back in right now or I swear to god I’ll fire  _both_  of you.”  
  
Chad shares a glance with Gen, a silent argument passing between the two of them before they all set about resetting the monitors and refilling the tub but Gen doesn’t move a muscle, instead glaring down at Jensen with a cold and silent fury that he swears she could only have learned from him.  
  
“I think you’ve had enough for today, sir,” she says tightly.  
  
“And I think I’m the doctor here, so I’ll be giving the orders. You called me out during an important memory intercession; I ought to fire you for that alone.”  
  
“Sir, with all due respect, you were under for long enough. I was not about to let you just slip under into a coma too.”  
  
“You don’t understand, I was at the suicide, I was there the night he killed himself, I could’ve—“  
  
“Could’ve what, stopped him from throwing himself off a building in a memory that already happened?” Gen’s perfectly neat bun looks frayed, as if nervous hands have torn and run through it a hundred times in the past few hours. “You need rest. And detox. Too much of this shit will severely damage you, or maybe you forgot that, Doctor.”  
  
Jensen blanches, and though she flushes, Genevieve doesn’t back down, nor unset the clench of her jaw. “You may be a brilliant doctor, but you are no superhero, Jensen.”  
  
“And you are not my  _fucking_  nurse,” Jensen spits, but even with that he knows she’s right. Exhaustion has already climbed all through his nervous system, willing him to do nothing other than curl up and sleep for the next day or two. But somewhere on the other side of that curtain is a kid trapped in his own mind.  
  
Genevieve steps back, straightening her lab coat, and if she’s hurt, her face doesn’t show one fraction of that feeling. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that. I’m also taking Mr. Padalecki back to his ward. You can help yourself out of the tub.”  
  
She walks out, heels making a sharp perfunctory noise on the tile without another word. Chad goes for a cheap, “She’s crazy” punch line, but even that doesn’t quite meet his eyes.  
  
Jensen sits in that tub for a very long time, staring at hands that had been reaching all of a few minutes ago.  
  
\--  
  
  
Jensen doesn’t much dream but when he does, it’s always the same.  
  
He knows whose mind he’s in before he’s even opened his eyes. There’s always been something about her mind that feels instantly recognizable, the kind of familiarity that comes from knowing someone like the back of your hand, so well that nothing about them could possibly shock you.  
  
He sees the floor of her mind first, the pavement that should be smooth—cracked, eroded, unlit. He trips and stumbles, finds himself at a pair of bare feet, staring at the hem of a white gown, all too familiar. He knows, because he carried her over the threshold of their first house with her in it. He knows, because when he saw her in it for the very first time, he fell head over heels all over again.  
  
“Lisa,” Jensen breathes her name on a sigh, chest cracked open with want and relief as he stands. She’s here, she hasn’t gone, even after the weeks, near months of waiting for him. She’s still here. Lisa’s here, waiting for him to come.  
  
She’s always so small. He doesn’t possibly know how but he’s surprised by it every time: by the knobby bones of her wrists, the slim set of her shoulders. He knows, in the weird fucked up way the subconscious always supplies without , that he can pick her up and swing her over his shoulder, just like he used to do so many days when they were wired on coffee and roughhousing and so alive it almost hurt to breathe.  
  
He knows what happens next in this game of red light green light, how his heart will stop and start and stop again. He knows what happens next because has dreamed about this moment since it happened, a sick Groundhog Day that only comes to play when he’s sleeping.  
  
The solution to fix the patient is easy. Establish a Call, give them a significant emotional memory, the most important memory, for them to focus on until the thread appears, and then they leave the maze. By this point he has done it dozens of times, without any mishaps.  
  
Something’s off, he knows it the second he sees her, a charge in the air like an oncoming storm, electric and eerie. He’s so tired, he’s so fucking tired. He’s a man who woke up a scant few weeks ago with no working legs and now he’s here. He’s here and something’s wrong and Jensen’s so fucking tired.  
  
_Jensen._  The voice falls not from her mouth but echoes in his head like a pulse, and her smile breaks over him like the dawn. She reaches for him with translucent fingers, a simulacrum of the person he knows, like ghosts do in the movies, and he can’t touch her when he reaches back. What happened? She’s not dead, she’s alive, hooked up to breathing tubes and ventilators but still alive.  
  
But then he thinks of how Lisa has been asleep for weeks since the accident, and in those weeks her body has begun to have organ failure, sepsis, the kind of things that only speak to a body that has given up. How it is machines that are doing the breathing for her, the living. Of the few coma patient’s that Jensen has mind mapped, all of them had shown at least some substantial brain activity, or functioning organs at the very least. There was still a person inside those patients, a somebody lost within themselves.  
  
  
He tells her they have to go. He tells her she has to wake up, tries to coax her over to follow him, but any and all words fall on deaf ears. She merely smiles, continues to reach for him, whispers his name in a litany, like a prayer. He tries to enter her memories, find something vibrant enough that will give her the strength to wake up. He throws himself at memory after memory, tumbles headfirst into the maze, Lisa on his heels, whispering. The two of them strike out a path into the darkness, searching for the way out, the one way ticket to Call her back to life. But no memory will take him in, the walls that should be a permeable membrane are now impossible to even touch, the very mind itself turned numb, unresponsive, dead.  
  
The desperation in his chest frosts over his insides, complete with the realization that here he is, smack dab in the center of Lisa’s mind, and there is nothing.  
  
Jensen wracks his brains for a way to save her, for a way to break her out of the prison of her own mind, but it is becoming increasingly clear—with each step further into the darkness, with each sealed memory, with each adoring whisper of his name—that there is no ‘her’ to break out.  
  
He cannot grasp any memories to give to her; he cannot pull her out of something she can’t be made aware of. He cannot save her, this isn’t a her he recognizes, nothing but a pale flicker of the woman he loves.  
  
Her mind is a barren thing. There is nothing to salvage here.  
  
He has to go. He needs to go. The realization slots like a knife between his ribs, and the tears are welling and spilling over his cheeks before he’s even begun to back away from her, the way one would a dangerous animal.  
  
“I have to go.” He whispers, and then jumps on the lie because he’s never been able to just walk away from her, “I’ll be right back, Lis.”  
  
The serene expression drops off her face, the autopsy of her smile revealing something dark, slithering out of her to land between them with a wet slap on the floor.  
  
He didn’t know then, but if the person who had come to save her hadn’t been Jensen, had instead been someone who’d loved her less, she would have been fine.  
  
_Don’t you love me, Jensen?_  Her voice is a terrible thing, all of the love and none of the recognition. This isn’t the Lisa he knows, just a shadow of a person that’s already checked out for the last time.  
  
_JensenJensenJensenJensenJensen_  
  
“Shut up!” He sobs, body taught, and steps back from her. “You’re not okay Lisa, something’s wrong. Baby—“  
  
Something is wrong, but Jensen doesn’t realize just what it is until the strings begin to pull.  
  
_Stay._  
  
The strings, they tighten, pulling him down, inwards. If her heart had all but devoured him in life, her mind would swallow him whole in death.  
  
_Stay._  Her voice soothes like a lullaby, and in the span of a second he recalls hundreds of nights falling asleep to just this sound, her voice next to his on the pillow, whispering as if someone would dare to eavesdrop on them.  
  
_Stay._  
  
He can’t Call himself out when she’s Calling him in, voice a siren, promising him all the memories they can maintain if they stay together, all the places they can do, if only he lets go of whatever’s out there.  
  
_You don’t understand._  He thinks.  _You are dead._  
  
_Stay._  The threads wind tighter, coil like snakes until the bones in his wrist grind, till his circulation cuts off.  
  
He doesn’t think through the panic, he simply follows through, his fight or flight instinct kicking in full throttle and Jensen inexcusably chooses flight. He thinks of the threads and he thinks of them being brittle, of molecules that can separate, and then he reaches downwards and rips the strings apart, each and individual thread pulling taut until breaking, one by one, under the strain of his grip.  
  
Jensen cannot remember the moment where his spine broke and shattered connection with his legs and the nerves within them but he will forever remember this; more than anything else. Pain so excruciating he isn’t entirely sure he isn’t ripping vital organs straight from his chest with bare hands, but his skin remains smooth, his pulse only slightly elevated. The scream that tears from his throat is raw and terrible and Lisa matches it, falling to her knees. The sob that follows doesn’t bring the cathartic relief of tears and grief, but of agony, as he feels his many layers of skin and flesh turn inside out. Surely he’s being ripped apart, cell by cell, eviscerated in tearing himself away from her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he sobs, screams, pleads for forgiveness. He’ll never be able to offer it to himself after all. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and tears off the threads on his other hand, the skin of his wrists rubbed and cut raw from the tightness of the thread, the friction.  
  
Patients that enter a medical facility for emergency care are often asked what they rate their pain on a scale of one to ten. By Jensen’s logic, it had always made sense that a ten didn’t exist for people; at least, not in a way that made it possible to comprehend it’s extremity. By a ten, you’re a dead man. By a ten, you’re at least passed out and headed for not resurfacing again. He cannot count this pain in numbers, it stems too deep. Agony like he’s known it his whole life, spiraling in concentric circles that never end for it is his, her agony too, their agony.  
  
Her cries are not so much words and pleading as much as they are broken off wails, and as he hears them he is reminded of every tear she ever wept, every scream. He lives them, and he loses them, too fast to comprehend and too hard to recover from, a hailstorm and a hurricane falling onto his heart with a fury.  
  
It never ends, the hurt, and then all at once, it does just that.  
  
Like yanking a knife from an infected wound, the effect of those broken threads leaves him robbed of breath, numb. Sucking in hair, Jensen lifts his head.  
  
The memories of sharp contrasts bleed dry of their color, flicker and fade, the shapes distorting, turning a lifeless, blurred shade of grey.  
  
Lisa still sits on the ground, shivering, the long moan of an animal that should have been put out of its misery long before this moment. Even from the ground she reaches for him, like there might be hope, like he’ll swing her up into his arms and carry her off.  
  
He knows, distantly, that this isn’t Lisa. This is a woman who’s been trapped in her own body for weeks and will do anything not to be dying alone. There is nothing here that can be salvaged, the cold and logical part of Jensen knows that. There is nothing that can be done.  
  
He can spew apologies all he wants, but there’s only one thing he can do to help her now.  
  
She has begged him to stay, but in the end Jensen does not.  
  
He hadn’t known Genevieve then, but years from this moment she will tell him a story over coffee one morning. Orpheus and Eurydice: the man who walked into hell to retrieve his love, and when he walked away from her, he could only look ahead, he could not look back to see if she would follow.  
Jensen never knows if she tried to follow him or not. Jensen never once looked back.  
  
Like Orpheus, he probably shouldn’t have tried to look for her at all. Because the moment he found her, he’d already killed her.  
  
She doesn’t scream again once she turns away. In fact any sound cuts off entirely, and the only thing Jensen can here is the sound of his own footsteps along the maze, following his lone string out. She doesn’t even flinch. Her eyes are pleading, her mouth set in that off kilter smile that he used to take every opportunity to kiss, but she does not scream. Not like Jensen does.  
  
“I have to go,” he says, and just like that he can feel the disconnection kick in. Those memories that he’d pulled the plug on, he won’t forget them. They won’t disappear, he won’t forget them. They’ll just be there. Pale, lifeless things that he keeps in his chest, no longer vital or necessary because he feels nothing when he thinks of them. Not pain, or loss, or happiness, just a flat, blank grey. The blink out one by one, flames snuffing out in the dark of her mind. “I love you, but I have to go.”  
  
She does not make a sound.  
  
The shock takes hold of him before he can vomit or scream himself hoarse, and he walks right out, the ripped strings, ragged and frayed in their edges, insubstantial, hanging limply from his wrist.  
He only gets to keep one memory and feel it too. It’s the one that gets him out, the one that keeps him strong.  
  
The Call comes, and he takes it, slipping in to the tune of ‘Champagne Supernova’. That particular memory is still intact, and in that memory alone does he still love her, does he still itch to kiss her crooked smile and fit an arm around the small set of her shoulders.  
  
He had waited too long, and her mind was too broken.  
  
In the end the doctors will tell him that he did everything he could. He will be awarded for his courage, compensated for his grief, and effectively shut up with therapy and drugs and whatever means necessary to make it all go away so he can go back to being the world’s best doctor. In the end, they’ll say Lisa loved him, but it’s time to move on, because so did she. In the end they’ll tell him she’d died peacefully, no less than drifted off to sleep before dropping off into the black.  
  
In the end, they’re wrong. Lisa had died screaming.  
  
And so Jensen wakes up from the nightmares doing the same.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Jensen doesn’t know what to expect when he enters Jared’s head twenty four hours later, he only knows what he’s dreading he’ll see. He’d pretty much forgone sleep to fight back the pit of anxiety in his chest, and Gen had to all but wrench his jaw open this morning to cram a piece of toast into his mouth and wash it down with some coffee.  
  
The worst possible case scenario is the one he’s only seen once before. A lifeless maze, with walls made of grey stone, the memories flickering without color, a black and white film with the saturation and sound out of sync. Lifeless, with no help of drawing the person themselves out into the real world.  
  
Jensen has walked away from a patient like that only once before. It would probably kill him to do so again.  
  
He opens his eyes and there’s Jared, five years old and in the mud, like Jensen had never left. Jensen’s knees almost buckle with relief at the full scale color of the memory, the vitality of it. Jared’s still here, hasn’t checked out of his mind. Jensen can still save him.  
  
Jensen can still undo all of this mess.  
  
Jared looks up, head cocked to the side. “You’re wrong.”  
  
“What?” Jensen asks, fearing the trepidation creep into him, the abject fear.  
  
“Something is wrong,” Jared repeats, “Why are you wrong?”  
  
“I, I don’t—“ Jensen sputters.  
  
“Next one,” kid Jared says knowingly, though he’s still slapping his patty cake in the muck. “Next one.”  
  
And just like that, Jensen can see the shimmering wall of the memory, the entrance back into the maze, the escape hatch he’d never been able to see in these memories before. He exits without preamble, and the next memory, the divorce office, is Jared sitting there again, staring oddly at Jensen. “Next one,” he mumbles, not making eye contact with Jensen, “next one, next one.”  
  
And so it goes.  
  
One memory, then to another, each time the same interaction, the same odd look of suspicion, of knowing, in Jared’s eyes. It’s a weird awareness that makes Jensen’s skin prickle and Jensen runs deeper and deeper into the maze, searching for the right Jared, the right memory, but he can’t find it. He can’t find a Jared that will smile at him, that will recognize him, until the path suddenly lightens and the maze becomes memory, a wide space.  
  
Jensen can’t truly tell how he’s gotten to the center of Jared’s mind. He just knows that he has.  
  
The wall of sudden and violent emotion doesn’t come this time around. Jensen slips into the memory like a warm bath, the sense of comfort, of home, swooping over his skin‒ the indescribable, sameness and safety as the innermost recesses of the mind. It’s an unnamed scent, tickling the prehensile tip of his senses, coasting along the edges of drugged out dream haze and caffeinated state of awareness.  
  
The air is still here, not inactive or dead in that stillness but rather poised, waiting. He could feel the life within, but it was subdued, the kind of muted thought process that only came when the mind was asleep, and in dreams, far away from the confines of this small space.  
  
Minds often take the form of a specific location once one clears out the maze; most people lean towards larger versions of their own bedrooms, their backyards, sometimes grand National Monuments and museums.  
  
Jared’s memory is that of an open rooftop, where the premature scent of oncoming rain is carried on a breeze that brushes the tips of Jensen’s fingers with Eskimo kisses as he walks.  
  
There is no better sound than a quiet mind. Jensen has no words that can describe it: a vast canvas, rippling colors and waves of hot and cold, memories flickering, but apart from that, silence. He used to associate silence with a lack of pulse, an empty apartment, with legs that lay still, but he’d come to find the silence of the mind such a better definition of the word. A quiet mind was like the Northern Lights, an entire prism of color across shades of glass, not an echo, nor whisper, no sigh. Thoughts exist, but lie dormant, content to noiselessly rustle in the corners of the cavern. The maze was down, with no pretense or attempt at hiding.  
  
And in the middle, a boy—a man, really, for Jensen had seen the boy—with a ratty hoodie and a tear streaked face, shivering.  
  
“Jensen?” The thoughts murmur, a symphony of recognition and fear, but Jared says nothing.  
  
Jensen had been so wrapped up in the events of the memory that he hadn’t gotten a chance to check out location. There had been too much between the pain and the heartbreak that Jared’s life has been so prone to even take notice, but now Jensen does. A flock of sparrows swoop and dive around the rooftops, their sunny chatter a contrast to the greyer skies, skies identical to the darker ones Jensen sees every day in Seattle.  
  
“I knew something was off,” Jared sighs, shattering the tranquility. “My Jensen would never disappear on me like that.”  
  
Jensen stares at him, holding back a mouthful of apologies and explanations.  
  
“Come here,” Jared says, the poster child of calm. Jensen does; he keeps his distance, but stands as close as he can.  
  
The birds swoop again and scatter, cars honk far off on the streets below, and the sun tries to pry through the clouds.  
  
“What do you see?” Jared asks, staring at Jensen, not even glancing at the city once, like he’s already got it memorized.  
  
Jensen looks out. “I see Seattle.”  
  
“And what else?”  
  
“And…and birds.”  
  
“Birds? That’s it?”  
  
“Lots of birds, flocks of birds. What do you see?”  
  
Jared pauses, as if chewing through the words, tasting each of them, and then, after a pause, “I see flight. Wings. Opening and closing, climbing higher, swooping lower. Flight, to elsewhere, to anywhere.”  
  
“And where would you fly, given the chance?”  
  
Jared doesn’t answer for a long moment, but Jensen can almost feel the thought like a hand on his shoulder, out of the corner of his eyes and omnipresent,  _far away from here._  
  
Jensen opens his mouth but then feels, once more, the telltale tug on his wrist, the sign that his two hours are up and they’re calling him back.  _No._  Jensen thinks, refusal pouring off his skin in waves. He sees the thread around his wrist glow, a heated ivory white. Jensen knows he can go back, that he has to have the Calling if he wants to get out of here.  
  
He can go back right now, or he can stay and fix the job. The decision takes a split second of consideration, and then Jensen does it, snatches the thread out of thin air and pulls, pulls,  _pulls_  on the memory, on his most important memory, until it snaps free. The pain guts him like a stab wound but he’s braced for it. He has known worse, after all. The thread crumbles and dissipates into particles and Jensen watches it trail through his fingertips like champagne colored mist, stricken.  
  
It is the last loved memory he has of Lisa, the one part of her that he was supposed to keep no matter what. Blind panic turns to despair and Jensen knows that there will be time for grief later, when he is alone and able to hate himself with all he has for continuing, time and again, to be emotional and selfish and weak.  
  
But right now there is no time to mourn the loss of a single thread because Jared is here. Jared is here, and Jensen stayed.  
  
“I come up here when I’m alone, which is often, I suppose.” Jared’s breath makes its own clouds in the cold, but he doesn’t look uncomfortable, even though Jensen feels the biting cold of brick seeping into his skin. “Birds come to nest in the scaffolding, and when it isn’t raining, they talk to each other.”  
  
Talk they do; Jensen’s never heard such a chorus of chirps and chatter in a place that wasn’t the aviary. He gets it now, why Jared’s thoughts fly on wings, darting in and out of reach, lost in a bird's song wrapped in rain clouds.  
  
Jensen clambers over the wall and sits next to Jared, lets their feet dangle off the ledge.  
  
A beat more of silence, then, “This is a dream, isn’t it. I’m dreaming, right?”  
  
Jensen gives a shaky smile. He knows this song and verse, knows how this is supposed to go, because he’s done  _this_  part a thousand times, told the patient yes, they’re asleep, and they need to wake up soon, and he can show them how. This is routine,  _this_  is something he’s familiar with.  
  
“Yes, and no. You’re asleep, Jared, you’ve been in a coma for several weeks. But it’s been long enough now. You need to wake up.”  
  
“A coma,” Jared frowns, “I don’t understand.”  
  
“That’s okay, you don’t have to. You just have to wake up.”  
  
Jared looks panicked. “I, I don’t know  _how.”_  
  
“That’s why I’m here. I went through all your memories, Jared, I felt everything you felt.” Jensen recites the script easily, in the gentlest most rehearsed tone he’s ever heard. “I’m going to help you get out.”  
  
“How?”  
  
Jensen breathes evenly, calming the tremor in his frame, “Think of your happiest memory, your strongest memory, something that you remember every detail of, something you’ll never forget. And I want you to concentrate on one small thing from that memory; it can be anything. A taste, or a smell, or a sound—“  
  
“A song?”  
  
“A song could work,” Jensen nods sagely. “And when you’ve picked that detail, I want you to focus on the memory, and only that memory, and tie it down to that detail. What you’re creating, essentially, is a life boat to pull you out of here. Can you do that, Jared, please?”  
  
Jared closes his eyes, inhales, brow knitting in focus. Jensen doesn’t know what he’s thinking of in this moment, but he feels the molecules of the air shift and part as the thread forms around Jared’s wrist, a thin and pale green thread, trailing from Jared’s wrist off into the empty air, dissipating into invisibility.  
  
“Where does it go?” Jared asks, giving the thread a few experimental tugs.  
  
“Back to your life. A life you’ve gotta start living.”  
  
“And if I never wanted to live it?”  
  
“That’s not for me to decide, Jared. You get to choose. But at least promise me that you’ll consider the option of it.”  
  
Jared nods solemnly. “Will you make me wake up? If I refuse?”  
  
“I’m not here to force you to do anything, but I came a long way to make sure you wake up, and I’m going to give you hell if you don’t.”  
  
Jared shrugs, smiling wryly. “That’s how it goes, I suppose. You’re here to save me.”  
  
“I’m just here to make sure you come back, and wake up. I’m nobody’s hero.”  
  
“Liar. You’ve saved me a thousand and one times, how can you be anything but?” Jared tips his head in Jensen’s direction, smiling, and even shivering in nothing but jeans and a sweater on the edge of a rooftop he still looks warm, like the kid who played in the sun for too long.  
  
Jensen doesn’t think on the meaning of that statement, of heroism; Jensen can only trust the process, the sure thing that when coma patients wake, they remember nothing. Nothing but sleep, but dreams, and nothing of the procedure.  
  
“How do we get out?”  
  
“You disrupt the serenity of the Center. Or, the same way you came here in the first place,” Jensen answers.  
  
“You mean I jump.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t answer. Jared sighs, resigned. It’s the calmest Jensen’s ever seen him, an exhausted acceptance of fate, a resolve that maybe everything will be okay. It almost gives Jensen hope that it will be okay.  
  
Jared raises his head again. “I’ll see you soon, right? I mean, I know this is a dream, and I have to wake up, but I’ll see you soon.”  
  
“Yes,” Jensen lies right through his teeth, “You’ll see me soon. And you’ll be better, soon. You just have to trust me.”  
  
“I do trust you, Jensen,” Jared says, voice underscored by a red breasted robin, twittering its heart song like its dying wish. “Have since the day I met you.”  
  
Jared Padalecki looks to him, and he means it. Patients trust Jensen blindly, faithlessly, trust him because he’s a doctor and he says he knows what he’s doing. But the look in Jared’s eyes right now is stone cold sure, like he’s got all the evidence he needs to back it up.  
  
Jared shakes at his thread one more time, looking slightly doubtful that that’s going to pull him out of here. “Will it hurt?”  
  
“No. No more than jolting awake does, as if from a dream.”  
  
“But you’ll be there. I’ll be okay.”  
  
“Yeah, Jared.” Jensen hates himself, now more than ever, because he doesn’t know. He will never hear about Jared’s follow up appointments, whether Jared ever gets his dog back, finds another apartment. It’s a breach of patient-doctor confidentiality, and Jensen’s broken enough rules to last a lifetime. “You’ll be okay.”  
  
“We’ll go together,” Jared says, nodding, so sure, the dimples in his cheeks popping out when he smiles sideways at Jensen. “Right? You jump, I jump.”  
  
It slams into Jensen in that moment, snatching the lungs right from his lungs. How much he needs this to be real, how much he wants to jump straight into oblivion with Jared at his side and wake up with that same arrangement. But they’re on different paths, and Jensen could never keep up with someone who gives and loves so much, not when Jensen has so little to offer in return.  
  
Jensen loves him, loves him so much he’d do anything to stay here a little longer if it meant Jared would still be able to wake up after the fact. But they’re running out of time, and Jensen’s run out of songs to sing.  
  
“Together,” Jensen lies.  
  
“Like everything else we’ve ever done.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
When Jared takes his hand, it’s cold and clammy, but their fingers grasp like key and lock. Jensen’s broken grey thread brushes, for just a second, with Jared’s pale green one. Nothing has ever felt as real. Nothing ever will be.  
  
The air is brusque and rushing when they push off the ledge, and the skies are grey and the birds are in harmony, robins and sparrows alike. Jared is clinging and Jared is holding and Jared is smiling sadly as the abyss crowds up to meet them.  
  
Jensen loves him.  
  
Jensen lets go.  
  
\--  
  
Fluorescent light carves into his skull and his eyes when he opens them, scooping out the coherent sense of his brain and body until all he can focus on, for a good several minutes, is breathing. The room is quiet; the interns are not panicking this time.  
  
“Status?” He can barely speak around the lump in his throat.  
  
“Patient is stable, sir, brain activity has kicked into full functionality. Probably will wake up in a few hours if we give him enough time.”  
  
“Good. All of you take him to recovery, run labs. And then take the rest of the day off.”  
  
Silence greets him.  
  
“Sir, are you—“  
  
“It was a tough case, guys,” When Jensen forces himself to smile, it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. “You did well, and I want full lab reports on my desk by Monday. We’ll have a quick meeting before we head home for vacation but for now, return the patient to ICU, and tell the nurses he’ll be waking up pretty soon. Murray, you’re on lab cleanup and inventory.” The team looks simultaneously exhausted and relieved with orders they can follow work they can do without putting Jensen under. They’ve been working around the clock, and he’s more grateful than he’s comfortable expressing. “And go get some lunch before we do our post-op debrief, okay? You all look starved.”  
  
Chad looks relieved, but Jensen can see Gen eyeing him silently from the edge of the whoops and cheers and hi-fives that Chad is giving him. Lab cleanup goes quickly, and Jensen sits as still as possible, aware of the oncoming headache and the parched feel that can only speak to dehydration. He doesn’t care about any of it; he feels cut to the quick. The only time he even feels remotely inclined to move is when they begin to trickle out one by one, taking Jared with them. Jensen forces himself to stay still, and like food, like all the other experiments Jensen’s run on himself, he wonders what will happen if he lets them take Jared away, if he lets Jared slip out the door. It takes all his remaining energy not track the motion of the gurney, not to ask to see Jared’s sleeping, troubled face one last time. But it’s for the best. It is.  
  
Jared will sleep for a few more hours, maybe even another day, but his eyes will open. His eyes will open and he’ll begin therapy and a whole new life and their every interaction, their every exchanged word and glance, will seem but far off distant dream, if Jared even recalls it at all. Patients usually didn’t. Jared would be no exception to that rule.  
  
Jared will wake up and go back to his life as if nothing had changed, not a single memory of Jensen in sight.  
  
And Jensen will be at home, hopefully drowning himself in a bottle of bourbon.  
  
“Cortese.”  
  
She stops, her expression wary but controlled as the other interns push past her. Jensen’s hands are shaking with the effort of keeping control over the hot thing rising in his chest like a chemical reaction, spilling over the test tube edges of his chest, welling in his eyes.  
  
“Lock the door behind you, please. And have a good lunch.”  
  
Gen nods, reminding and reassuring Jensen of why he’d picked her in the first place. The door closes, the fluorescent lights carve, and Jensen listens to the sound of the hospital bed being wheeled down the hallway. Out of sight, out of mind.  
  
That’s how it’s supposed to be, at the very least.  
  
Jensen presses his face into the under meat of his forearm, and the tears that fall from his eyes are his, and only his, this time around.  
  
The remainder of the day presses on, Jensen picking up the pieces of himself and plastering on a composure that seems convincing enough. The interns come back after lunch break for a quick debriefing, the usual summarizing and reports made on the case, but Jensen feels checked out for more than half of it, listens to their presentations and inspired questions with a barely tuned attention.  
  
There are two types of tired. One, a pleasant downer to the bloodstream, all saccharine exhaustion slathered like butter on your skin, sinking deeper, crooking its fingers in the itchier parts of his eyes, the looser muscles and joints.  
  
After he leaves Jared’s head and returns to the real world, Jensen only feels the other, the second kind of tired that somehow only brings him to a further alertness in its urgency, a crack-cocaine intensity of compunction and anxiety that attacks his cells, does not crook in his eyes and joints so much as dig, sharp claws demanding sleep, and in that demanding, prolong its arrival.  
  
This kind of tired tastes like lots of things, try though Jensen may to grind his teeth against them.  
  
The interns ask about him, bouncing about excitedly to see what their next case is. He shunts off Murray to do recovery therapy for Jared and sends Gen with him to do some extra scans and tests before he allows them to go home again. Better to know that Jared is okay, that everything is okay, that by loving him, Jensen didn’t fuck up some immediate part of him.  
  
He knows without question that when he finally allows himself to sleep that he will dream of Jared. He will wake in the night, legs somehow wrapped in covers that he can’t remember pulling over himself. He’ll tug the catheter loose in a fit of nightmare. He’ll wet the fucking bed.  
  
And still it’ll be with him. He’ll never be able to sleep it away, put time and hours of rest and the imagery just at his fingertips: birds, wings, flight.  
  
He needs a run. A good, healthy, uncomplicated run through someone else’s mind. They may have just finished a case, but Jensen feels no need to return to this reality. He needs to remove himself from his body, which so often felt like a safety box but currently feels like a prison, diseased with guilt, with want, with human error and curiosity.  
  
There is a myth Jensen remembers, a Greek myth about Prometheus, who gave man fire, technology, a means of survival, out of pity, out of curiosity to see what had happened.  
  
Prometheus ended up chained up to a rock with his liver ripped out every day for his troubles. Jensen doesn’t feel too far off.  
  
Curiosity killed the cat? More like curiosity killed the paraplegic psychologist, Jensen thinks bitterly, downing his coffee like a shot of liquor.  
  
He dismisses Gen and Chad for the week and stays behind to finish off the paperwork, his own mind two floors down in recovery, and not trapped in the confines of his own flesh.  
  
\---  
  
Two floors down, attached to monitors and tubes, Jared Padalecki opens his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

 

  
One of the first books Genevieve can remember reading on her own was about Greek Mythology. It was a dusty old tome with a cracked spine, crumbling pages, and horridly grotesque illustrations that never would have been approved for publishing in the 21st century. She’d been barely seven at the time, and a weekly trip with her foster parents to the Grand Central Library had merited this precious and private time to do nothing but read to her heart’s content. She spent hours poring over it, mouthing out strange tasting Greek names on her tongue and staring at the vulgar pictures in fascination. After several years in and out of group homes, and several months here and there on the streets very few things shocked Gen, even at age seven. Nudity of other bodies was a commonplace thing in the life of a kid who’d grown up in group homes, and violence, well, that went hand in hand with Gen’s life just as often as different homes did. A new violence, a new home, every few months or so.

Eventually Gen would get tired of having home and violence in her life and remove herself from both of those things, but then, at seven years old, she was content to curl herself into the dilapidated reading chair in the innermost corner of the stacks and read her fill of Greek myths until her foster mom came stomping up the stairs to drag her home again. Gen would grow to understand that everyone had an addiction they used to escape their lives. For some it was drugs, or alcohol, or work, or sex. For her, it was the perfect solace of a well-established novel. But she loved, first and foremost, the Greek myths. She loved the concept of Gods and Goddesses, of reasons for why seasons come and go, why spiders spin their webs.

But her favorite, by far--or at least the one that stuck in her head the most--was the myth of Theseus and Minotaur battling to the death inside the humongous labyrinth.

Gen has found that most tend to remember just those two characters: Theseus, Mr. Macho Man strutting about with his sword, and the big angry homicidal bull man. It wasn’t something Gen brought up for small talk at parties—as if Gen even went to parties—but rather something she brought up to see if people properly paid attention, actually knew the myth instead of the diluted half-assed version of it. Most of the time, people didn’t know it. That frustrates her more than it should.

Bottom line is that although Theseus got all the guts and glory of killing the Minotaur, Theseus was not the actual hero of that story. It was Ariadne, the princess with the ball of string, the one who knew how to pull that fucking idiot hero out of the very maze he’d lost himself in in the first place.

Ariadne’s thread. It brought Theseus out of the Labyrinth that string, saved the idiot’s life. And what did he do in turn? He abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos, had forgotten about her and the promises he’d made to her, the love he’d sworn.

Which, Gen surmises, just goes to show that connections to other humans, tying yourself to someone, typically did shit for you in the long run.

In her worst nightmares, ones that leave her thrashing to awareness, clenching her fists so hard they ache, she can’t find that thread. Her Theseus, her stupid idiot fucking hero, is stuck in the maze, and she’s got no way to lead him out.

It’s how she finds herself blinking up at the dark ceiling one week after Jensen cured their most recent patient, cold sweat dripping from temples to sheets, grasping for a thread that isn’t there.

Just a nightmare, she tells herself in between deep and steadying breaths, but she of all people is aware of the thin line between nightmares and reality.

There’s a voice scratching at the walls of her mind that tells her if she closes her eyes again there are more nightmares waiting in the darkness of her mind. Better to accept there will be no sleep tonight and get up while she’s at it. There’s no use forgoing sleep to reminiscence of things she’s long put behind her when she can forgo sleep for better purposes.

The other nightmares can wait. There is enough fear to last a lifetime in the hopeless sensation of not knowing the feel of a ball of string on your hands, in being unable to control the loss and finding of the only person she’s ever remotely cared about.

Jensen’s medical library is one of few things that Gen cherishes above all else among the things she’s been lucky enough to have.

She often thinks of her siblings, of long afternoons with Johnny in her lap, his small hands turning the pages as she read him Harry Potter in a low tone of voice, or long cold nights pressed to Sarah for warmth under skimpy blankets, but that takes her down a path that feels too much like sadness so she retreats from the thought. Best to save those for the nightmares too.

The library is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house, and she can hear the torrential rains pressing against the glass window panes, as if begging to get inside and drench the carpet. She deftly flicks the reading lamp on and nestles herself into the reading chair, not unlike she did at seven years old, with legs tucked to her chest in a bobby pin curve, hair spilling onto the pages as she bends over the book.

Jensen had hemmed and hawed when she’s picked the series up at a second hand bookstore, but he let her squeeze all seven of them into their own little shelf without much resistance. It was silly and childish, but on nights like these, there was often more comfort to be found in the Harry Potter books than in anything else on the planet.

She’s almost done reading The Deathly Hallows. The next late night she’ll most likely start the series again, just as she always does. There are other books that she reads, but at this raw and vulnerable time far past midnight, she allows her childhood indulgence to come out.

Chapter Thirty Five. King’s Cross.

Gen is pretty sure JK Rowling isn’t a mind mapper, but she’ll never get over the surrealism of what it’s like to have the idea of a Center perfectly described, the clear air the non-descript location, the peace.

“Do not pity the dead, Harry, pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present.”

Harry nodded and sighed. Leaving this place would not be nearly as hard as walking into the forest had been, but it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back to pain and fear and more loss.

Dumbledore may have made a considerable amount of lot of fucked up choices and misplaced judgments, but this chapter never ceased to hit her in the softer places of her chest. Pity the living. Because life was, as Gen has always known it, a long parade of suffering that could only be fought by working hard, by helping deplete the suffering of others. That’s what she did, what they as mind mappers did. That was her job, and that was Jensen’s job.

But Gen often worried if they were hurting more than helping in the midst of all this. The Center of the patient was just like King’s Cross, warm and light and peaceful. What if their patients just wanted to be left alone to themselves? What if they weren’t willing to wake up, and would drag down anyone who tried to help them? What was there to do but give up on a lost cause, to let them stay at that goddamn train station?

She gets two pages in before her thoughts take over, and it takes five minutes to realize she’s read the same page at least four times over without turning it. Resigned, she closes the book on her lap and decides on staring at the dozens of medical journals and papers, of the medicine awards and articles proclaiming Dr. Ackles’ genius. She puts them up so Jensen keeps his eyes on the real prize, but she knows it’s gotten the point where he doesn’t even notice them when he passes by. His mind, his heart, is elsewhere.

Something’s wrong with Jensen. Gen gnaws at the jagged edge of a thumbnail, staring out at the rain barely visible from the porch light. Something’s wrong with Jensen and Gen would bet money that it has to do with that suicidal patient Jensen had worked on for nearly a month. They’ve been on a mandatory rest period for seven days now, but with the new day will come the return to work, and truth be told, it’s something Gen’s not entirely sure Jensen is up to quite yet.

The kid, whoever he was, had done a number on her boss. That much was clear.

After the first time Jensen went under and came up looking white as a sheet, wide eyed and terrified, Gen had made a resolution and dug up everything she could on the kid. Medical records, past schools, even tried to stalk him on Facebook, but to no results. It was hard to play Private Investigator when Jared Tristan Padalecki was, by all accounts, an unremarkable and unexciting human, barring that one time he decided to throw himself off a building. His school records were passable, grades high enough to keep him in high school and low enough that there were no academic achievements worth noting on his diploma. Jared had enrolled in a photography class at Seattle Community college, only to drop out halfway through the semester. The only crime on his record was never returning the camera equipment to the professor, which had stacked up outrageous amounts of rental fines.

The guy, as far as Gen was concerned, was a mere blip on the radar. He wasn’t a serial killer or a genius. He didn’t even have much of a record to speak of: he didn’t even have any major social media accounts. To be frank, she couldn’t for the life of her get why Jensen was so fucked up over this one. Each saved patient always granted Jensen and the other interns a week’s vacation. Whatever intern was assigned to post-op therapy—in this case, Murray, who Gen didn’t think too highly of—continued attending to the patient, but other than that, serious R&R was mandated. She’d been all but forcing food down Jensen’s throat and reminding him that sleep was a necessary component to live, and he listened, complied without protest. Usually he would snap at her, at least put up a fight, but Jensen now went through the motions not unlike a zombie, his focus elsewhere.

In her several years as a mind mapper, there’d been plenty of fucked up people in and out of their ward. People that Jensen had tried and cured or failed to fix, and none of them had had this effect on Jensen. None of them had Jensen staring off into space in the middle of day, moving about with a haunted expression on his face. For all he’d been through, Jensen was the most solid and controlled person Gen had ever known. Or, he used to be. Something tells Gen that Mr. Jared Padaleckis gone and fucked it right up, and she has no idea how.

You could convince yourself something is or isn’t real. A sound in a dark house could be a mouse or a murderer, a pang in your chest could be a hurt or an utter heartbreak. Gen’s half convinced that humanity’s issues would be so much less if people didn’t stop to think or feel about things all the time. If a breakup was just a break up, if a death was just a death, if a lonely existence wasn’t sad or depressing, if it just was.

Life wasn’t all that complicated. People just made it that way.

The birds are twittering—she can hear them all the way from the aviary. Hedwig joins them with a mournful hoot. Night comes to a climax as a pink begins to bloom into the dark sky, now barely drizzling with rain.

Genevieve watches the sun rise beneath grey clouds, doesn’t move from that giant reading chair until she hears Jensen stirring in his bedroom.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes tucked back in its slot among the others in the series, and she goes to turn the coffeepot on.

\--

Despite a full seven full days of rest, Dr. Ackles looks tired today.

Not tired in the way that one hundred percent of all doctors are, caffeine fueled with permanent shadows on their under eye, but tired in the faded out way. Genevieve’s never known Dr. Ackles to enter the lab without a smile or determined set to his mouth, without a muted joy in which he discusses today’s patient. As far as she can tell, there is nothing Dr. Ackles loves more than working at this hospital and teaching his interns, even if he does spend half his time scolding them. Dr. Ackles is a force of nature, Dr. Ackles is a scientist and a mentor and a drill sergeant all in one and he is also brilliant, maybe the most brilliant man alive.

So if Dr. Ackles looks tired, there’s no telling how the man behind that image feels.

This is not a Jensen that Gen can easily recognize, the tinge of his skin nearing grey when he enters the lab, and although Gen can pick up on the coffee smell that always sticks to him once he’s visited Starbucks across the street; the caffeine appears to have no effect on him. He drifts in slowly, five minutes late, which feels like hours to the rest of the team.

She waits awkwardly in the hallway as he rolls up, largely ignoring the chatter of Mike Rosenbaum and Tom Welling, the two male nurses who help deliver the patients to and from the care facility where long term coma patients are kept. She doesn’t see Mike and Tom too often, but it’s the start of a new case, and they’ve brought in the newest patient. Chad’s here too, shooting the shit, the three of them most likely reminiscing over their most recent bar crawl from the sound of it. Not that it matters, Gen only has eyes for Jensen.

“Get lost in your own hospital?” She asks softly, fighting off the impending frown with a smile. She’s been walking on eggshells with Jensen for days, the nurturing instinct feeling odd and uncharacteristic for her. Jensen jumps, like he hadn’t been expecting to see her, any of them really.

All doctors look tired, sleep deprived but insistent on staying awake so they can get to the next patient, the next surgery. Gen had spent the week of rest making his favorite foods, taking him every other day to the hospital to talk to Jeff, even walking him down to the aviary and sitting with him and the birds, waiting for him to speak.

“Lemme guess, you decided to use the stairs again,” Chad jokes, wincing when Gen whacks him with the charts she’s got on hand.

The four of them stare at Jensen waiting for a response, or some sort of reaction that’s at least halfway chiding: it comes about five seconds tardy, with a faked smile super-glued to the retort.

“You know me, always aiming higher than I can reach,” Jensen responds coolly, unbuttoning the sleeves of his once-ironed now wrinkled shirt.

“No sweat, Doc,” Mike quips, walking over to the monitors, nursing his own cup of coffee and making notes on his own chart. “S’not your fault it takes you twelve years to get up three floors.”

Tom nods solemnly, “Tricky bastards, those stairs.”

Gen rolls her eyes and ignores idiots One and Two, opting to quietly watch Jensen as he looks about the empty lab, the clean whiteboards and fresh charts; the start of a new case. Chad heads off in his own direction for his first morning of outpatient therapy with the Padalecki kid. Tom and Mike continue talking smack to each other and cracking jokes, meanwhile Jensen looks around the lab like he isn’t sure where to get started, stares at the basin and the monitors as if he isn’t sure how to approach them.

“When will Murray be back?” He asks after a quiet moment.

Gen jumps on the opportunity to interact with Jensen, who still looks entirely lost in a room he’s worked in for over a decade, “he should be here within the hour. I think we’re fine to move on to the next patient without him.” She turns on her heel to Mike and Tom. “Which reminds me, shouldn’t you Neanderthals be returning to your glorified babysitting jobs right about now while we do the actual patient care?”

Mike grumbles something unsavory that Gen doesn’t pick up but Tom cackles at, but they roll the new patient into the room and quickly exit, following her request. She supposes she should feel smarted by the guys’ easy camaraderie and the dozens of after-work drinks that she’s declined an invitation to, and apologetic about the waspish comment, but she doesn’t. Gen’s never really felt like ‘one of the guys’ that goes out every once and a while to get blackout drunk after a shift, and still somehow manages to show up the next morning with a one hundred percent recovery rate. She’s not sure if that lack of attachment is because she technically lives with the boss, or because Gen’s more wary of male companionship that she’d previously thought.

Whatever the reasons, Gen’s not one of the guys. She never has been, and it suits her just fine.

Twenty minutes later she’s got Jensen on the table, IV in place and electrodes set. He is the epitome of calm and ready to begin, but Gen’s more than aware of the dark smudges under his eyes, the dulled tone of his voice.

She’ll just watch him more closely today. It’ll be fine.

“Cortese, debrief,” Jensen commands on a sigh, none of his usual punch in it, as Genevieve prepares the patient.

“Standard coma procedure. Patient is female, five years old, fell off the monkey bars at school. Minor fracture on the skull, has healed but not since woken up. Should be a walk in the park,” she recites from memory, having studied the chart thoroughly the day before.

“Fun,” Jensen replies tersely. “Alright Cortese, you know the drill. I’ll go in and scope this one out, and then pick a resident to fill in on the procedure pending on how much of a doozy it turns out to be.”

“Patient is ready to rev.” Gen’s checking and double checking the last of the equipment, adjusting the suction cups on Jensen’s head, and triple checking the dosage on the chart. “Only .5 milliliters, Dr. Ackles, you’ll barely be in there for long enough too--”

Jensen leans back and closes his eyes and he’s out, just like that.

And, five minutes later, he opens his eyes. “Did you push the dosage or not?”

“It’s in your bloodstream as we speak,” says Gen, gut twisting with the simple notion that something is wrong.

“I---I couldn’t get in. You’re sure the patient isn’t completely brain dead?”

“Sir, no offense, but there’s absolutely no way I could have screwed this up.”

“I don’t understand.” Jensen frowns, and though it’s a common enough facial expression to grace his features, and now the gut instinct pours into Gen’s stomach, fills her with dread. “I don’t—“

He looks to Gen, helpless and without answers, and then softly instructs that they try again. She tries a slightly heavier dosage, and Jensen lies still in that tub for twenty whole minutes before hauling himself upright, a vein throbbing in his forehead. “It’s not working,” he mutters, heaving his body onto the chair next to the tub, toweling himself dry furiously, but she can sense the confusion in the furtive looks he’s sending her.

“Describe the mind,” she prompts.

“There was no mind, I couldn’t even get in. Her thoughts were there, her emotions were there. But the thoughts wouldn’t pull me down, wouldn’t take me in. I’d start to get in and then it’d spit me right back out. I couldn’t hold onto a thread long enough.”

“And your thread? Could you feel it?”

Jensen stills, not answering, but staring at the floor and she can practically hear the demands he’s about to make of her. Because as all things with Jensen, she is willing to make leaps and bounds just to make sure that he can do his fucking job.

Get me out of this, Cortese. Help me out of this, Cortese. Where’s my fucking thread, Cortese?

Gen thinks more often than not that she’d hate Jensen if she didn’t know they were exactly the same person. She feels, rather than spots, Chad sidling in to the room out of the corner of her eye as everyone waits for her orders, her decisions.

Because it’s becoming rapidly clear that Jensen isn’t exactly calling the shots. At least, not today.

“I think you need more rest, Dr. Ackles.” Gen says pointedly, and within seconds and a whir of tapping fingers she’s sent a text to Dr. Morgan for a last minute appointment, call back Tom and Mike to wheel the little girl back to Pediatrics. Jensen undoes the electrodes and the IV robotically, like he’s trying to simply process the bare motion itself.

“Uh—Cortese?” Chad brushes past Tom and Mike. A week’s worth of vacation has done nothing to harrow the edge of irritation Gen feels upon sight of Chad. There has something, since the very beginning, that has rubbed her the wrong way, scratched at her skin like those cuts you get when you decide it’d be fun to roll your way down a grass hill.

She images that’s what most women experience when coming into contact with the likes of Chad Michael Murray. Fun in theory, but leaving a rather nasty itch upon execution.

“Cortese, if I could have a few words—“

“Not now, Murray,” Gen says tersely, gaze already set on Jensen, who’s toying with the wires and medical equipment attached to him like he doesn’t even know what to do with it anymore. She’s vaguely aware that Chad isn’t leaving her alone, but she ignores it.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Gen steeples her fingertips on the medical table, balancing herself, preparing herself for the worst.

“I just—I need rest. Like you said.”

“You couldn’t enter the patient’s mind.” It’s not a question.

“I’ve been distracted. Exhausted. I can get in just fine if I get some rest.” It’s not an answer.

“Didn’t look like it to me.”

Jensen doesn’t answer, doesn’t even fight back, just slumps in his wheelchair and heads for the doors, without prompting. She makes to stop him and drag him, chair and all, to Doc Morgan himself when she herself is dragged to stay in the room.

“Fucking hell Cortese, could you wait a fucking second.” Chad is glaring now, full on squint, and Gen would pull out some reprimand about language in the workplace if she wasn’t already so goddamn tired. “What the fuck is going on? I thought we had a patient.”

“Key word: Had. Dr. Ackles is still tired. He couldn’t enter her mind.”

“What do you mean he—he’s never had that problem before.”

“Yeah well, we’ve got problems galore here.”

“Must be a day that ends in Y then.”

Damn him, she has to tamper down the urge to laugh. Then she remembers that he’s still got a hand clamped on her shoulder, but Chad isn’t even looking at her. He’s staring at the table, at the monitors and electrodes and Gen may not be bosom buddies with Chad Michael Murray but she’s spent enough time around his stupid ass to know when the shitty light bulb in his head has lit right up.

“Genevieve.” His hand is still white knuckling around her arm. She stills at the use of her first name.

“Let go of me.”

“I need to talk to you.” All business, none of the usual swagger. Which means, more or less, that it probably is serious and probably could use Gen’s attention. “I need to talk to you now.”

It can’t be helped, really. Gen snaps. “I have bigger problems to deal with than your petty shit, Chad. If your patient is acting up or needs to be medicated, I couldn’t give a good goddamn. My priority, right now, is to make sure that Dr. Ackles, head of this branch of medicine, is okay. Now let go of my arm or I swear before Christ I will tear yours off.”

Chad does, and Gen takes after Jensen, in high hopes that she’ll track him down, but it’s to no avail. Jensen’s cleared the hospital long before she figures that fact out.

\--

Jensen misses dinner and Jensen misses late night tea but Jensen, reliable as ever, rolls in after taking a cab home sometime in the later part of the evening. She doesn’t look up from Harry Potter when he comes in, only smooths the edge of the crease on a dog-eared page.

“You know, I didn’t cancel your appointments today so you could play hooky and then not get any rest.”

“I’m not going to argue with you,” Jensen says, defeated and tired, tired like she hasn’t known him to be in years. The tired of a diseased tree, still tall and reaching out with high branches but sick sick sick on the inside. “I’m going to bed.”

Gen should probably do the same. Gen will do the same. Just one more chapter. One last quarter of an hour curled up in places and worlds much brighter and softer than this one.  
\--

When Gen woke out of her coma, she would not sleep for five days. Doctors begged and pleaded, Jensen soothed and coaxed, but Genevieve would not shut her eyes for rest, preferred to let them drug her into a dreamless, colorless sleep. She was too afraid to face the nightmares tucked behind her eyes. She knew what had happened inside her mind with Misha. She knew that the majority of it was repressed, cleaned up with Jensen’s help, but like most troubling things, like most fears and worries, it would come out in sleep, claw into her with greedy hands.

Meditation was the only thing that got her calm enough to ever fall asleep, to push away the panic that she’d slip into slumber and accidentally never slip out again. Weeks and months of measured breathing and clearing her mind finally allowed for a peaceful seven hours, enough to get her through the day. Gen always meditated before sleep. It’s what kept her so calm, it’s what kept most—not all, but most—of the remnants of Misha out of her mind.

She hadn’t meditated before falling asleep over Harry Potter and maybe that’s the reason she wakes so violently in the first place, one hand reaching for her heart, the other for the invisible thread—

Smack. Her book falls to the floor and Gen sits up, pulse rapid and spine tingling.

The first thing Gen learned about being the loneliest runaway on earth was to trust your instincts. And right now Gen’s instincts are telling her something’s wrong.

The air is cold, frigid even, and Gen takes open the front door. One bathrobe and two rain boots later she’s out the front door, following what she assumes is Jensen, heading to the aviary early. It’s barely three am. She’s going to kick his ass for not being in bed.

“Jensen?” She nudges open the door, Seattle night air clouding her breath. “C’mon inside.”

She’s never seen it this empty. The birds are either tucked away in the houses or tucked even further away in the trees. She can hear the hoot of Archimedes yards and yards away. But it’s quiet. There’s not a single twitter or song to be heard, barely even a sputter of wings.

A sharp squawk nearly causes Gen to yelp and she looks up, exhaling a bit hysterically when she catches sight of Nevermore, perched on one of the pines, over near a cluster of bushes. Christ, that bird is more the size of a cat rather than an actual bird. “Creepy little shit,” she mutters, staring him down. “You’re creepy, aren’t you?”

They’re a good several yards apart but Nevermore fixes his beady eyes on her, head cocking to the side, considering. It croaks again, the noise a hollow grating sound on Gen’s ears. A bad omen, the raven. Gen may not have been a total expert in Mythology, but she does remember that.

She makes to walk forward and shoo Nevermore off, but then stumbles when her boot catches on something, a loose stone in the garden or—

Or a hand.

Gen blinks in the darkness, but it remains, pale and twitching against the damp grass. A pale hand with calloused fingers that leads to a pale wrist, to a pale arm to the body sprawled on the ground, jaw locked, mouth foaming, jerking back and forth.

“Jensen,” she falls to her knees, robbed briefly of all her know how and ability to help, breathless and blinking, more useless than she’s ever been in her life. “Jensen!”

His wheelchair sits a few feet away, empty. Gen screams, Nevermore cackles, and the moon watches on.


	7. Chapter 7

_ _

 

 _One Week Earlier_  
  
Jared Padalecki is having a fucking weird week.  
  
Which is not what one would expect to say about waking up in the hospital to find out you’ve more or less been in a coma for weeks and only now just recovered from a suicide attempt. But that is the only word that applies. Jared’s re-entry into life was not sad or revelatory or like waking up to a brand new world. It was weird. It was fucking  _weird._  
  
That seems like a glib way to describe his current situation, but Jared’s well adjusted like that.  
  
Maybe it was the waking up to an empty room that had done it. The waiting for a rather long amount of time for Jensen to walk in, and feeling slightly off kilter when Jensen never did.  
  
Jensen, who had been there for everything up until this point.  
  
That wasn’t an overstatement, either. As far back as Jared can remember, the sun rose and fell on Jensen’s presence, and he was always there for the important moments. He was especially there when Jared was hurting or sick. When Jared had his wisdom teeth removed, Jensen was there to drive him home from the doctor’s office, and didn’t even make fun of him for talking loopy and drooling on his car upholstery. When Jared got into his first fight, Jensen was there when the nurse discharged him with an ice pack and four Band-Aids. The first time Jared cut himself, it was Jensen that wrapped his wrists in gauze and put Jared together like he was actually worth something. Jensen was there for  _everything_ , all the milestones of Jared’s life, as if Jensen’s itinerary was somehow tuned to Jared’s own. Jensen was there, and Jensen was there for  _Jared_ , like sum of his parts had meaning, was important.  
  
So it baffled Jared when he’d woken up after a rather dramatic  _suicide_  attempt, and Jensen’s name hadn’t even been on the visitor’s log.  
  
“Perhaps you could describe him to me?” The nurse said helpfully, a first-day-on-the-job medical intern who pronounced Jared’s name wrong and regarded him with all caution as if Jared was a highly volatile time bomb rather than a kid who just woke up from a six week nap.  
  
Jared had described Jensen, because he knew Jensen down to the last freckle on his nose, down to the specific shade of his eyes, the strange bend of his legs when he walked. But the nurse knew no such Jensen, and Jared—in some weird bout of post-op amnesia—couldn’t even provide a last name.  
  
So he waited. He waited  _two days_ , stalling the doctors ready to release him as much as he could. He bit his nails down to the quick gnawed his lip bloody in anxiety.  
  
But Jensen never showed. And Jared went home, alone.  
  
Jensen not coming, Jensen not  _caring_ , well, it stung. Jared was used to hurt, but this particular blow felt deeper, somehow, poison that spread to his core after the initial impact. The absence of Jensen was  _wrong_ , and it made Jared sadder than he had any right to be because there was surely a simple explanation to the absence. Like Stephen, like anyone Jared ever cared about, Jensen had most likely left. Maybe this was it, then. Maybe his crazy had finally been the last straw for Jensen, and the guy had moved on to better, less broken people.  
  
Truth be told, Jared wouldn’t blame him.  
  
But then he’d gone to scroll through his phone, send an apology text, and he couldn’t find Jensen’s number. And what he remembered led to a number out of service. Jared was sure he’d had all of Jensen’s contact information memorized up and down but a phone number led to an out of service line; an address, to an abandoned warehouse just of the highway, not the cozy nest of a house that Jared remembered. Hurt bled to confusion bled to panic, and now Jared is searching, frantically, for a person that doesn’t seem to have left a trace in his exit.  
  
What the fuck is going on?  
  
Jensen isn’t in Jared’s apartment when he returns. Jensen’s stuff, his rain jacket from the Seahawks game, his extra set of keys, his birthday and Christmas presents, all vanished. There is nothing in the apartment that spoke to any sign of Jensen having ever stepped through the door. Jared’s landlord had looked at Jared like he was  _crazy_  when Jared asked if he’d seen Jensen, politely reminded Jared that the last guy to leave Jared’s apartment had blue eyes and a baseball cap and had left after a screaming match with Jared.  
  
Which had given Jared the idea to call Stephen to see what he knew. Maybe Stephen would know would have heard from Jensen, seen him around their usual hangouts. It wasn’t a small city, but Jared found his exes had a nasty habit of cropping up in the uncanniest places.  
  
But Stephen picks up, gives Jared a few terse words. A quick no, Jared, I have no clue who the hell Jensen is or why you would think I know him.  _You were alone when we were together, you didn’t hang out with anyone but me,_  and hangs up.  
  
Not the best game of catch-up with the ex, but it was enough information to clue Jared in to the fact that there is something seriously wrong. Talking sense into himself isn’t an option, and panic becomes desperation.  
  
No one in Jared’s life, not his nurses, not his landlord, not his ex, seem to have a clue who Jensen even was. No one in the world knew Jensen, except for Jared. And that wasn’t acceptable. Jared  _needs_  Jensen, as pathetic as that is. The most important person in his life couldn’t have just walked off the face of the earth without someone noticing, without anyone remembering he’d ever been there. Surely, this is a fluke. Something is  _wrong._  
  
It never occurs to Jared that this might be something wrong with  _him_  until he remembers the photographs.  
  
They are buried, stuffed in the deepest pits of the closet he’s got stuffed full of junk, and when he pulls them out, hope flutters in his chest. He can make missing person’s posters, maybe start a Facebook campaign, get the word out there that his friend is missing.  
  
He paces the length of his empty apartment, lays the photographs out in straight rows across the wooden floor, rows in dozens, rows in hundreds, until the floor is covered and there’s but a small square space for Jared to stand. Surely there is a semblance of Jensen to find in there, for Jared remembers taking photos of Jensen clear as day. It’s the only thing Jared’s ever been good at, seeing Jensen in the right light, catching the glow that dances off his skin, the bottle green light of Jensen’s eyes. Jared must have taken thousands, only developed the good few. Jensen was always the main focus of Jared’s lens, the artistic point in the frame which drew Jared’s eye.  
  
There are no photos of Jensen here. The photos he looks at now, the hundreds upon hundreds of photos he remembers taking of Jensen, are all empty canvases. Sunsets and rainfalls and kitchen tables with no one sitting at them.  
  
Jared sinks to his knees, stares out at the floor, evidence of an empty life, an emptier heart.  
  
“Where are you?” he croaks to the Polaroids, searching their depths for a flash of a familiar smile, even so much as silhouette.  
  
Waking up to this world was like opening a book, his favorite book, to find that all his favorite characters had walked right off the pages, into unknown locations, unknown fates, with no way of reaching through the text to bring them back.  
  
They say pictures are worth a thousand words, but Jared gets nothing from these.  
  
\--  
  
He doesn’t sleep well, and if sleep comes at all, it’s in the same vivid nightmare. A black and white horror story, colored threads twining around his wrists, pulling him closer, a woman in white whispering ‘Stay.’ Jared cuts the threads and when the colors drain from the walls, he feels like he’s bleeding out, all warmth and life slipping from his fingers. He wakes up screaming. The image of her face, shocked, pale, pleading, takes hours to fade from the back of his mind.  
  
Jared drinks a lot of coffee those first two days, something he loathed the taste of until he woke up in the hospital craving it. There is no Jensen to be found in the photographs but he stares at them again, unwillingly to close his eye and go for another round with the woman in white and the threads trying to tear his damn limbs off.  
  
He vaguely remembers watching a news segment once, some freak accident where a woman from Arkansas woke up from surgery and spoke with a Scottish accent that she’d never had before. She had never been to Scotland and she didn’t have a single Scottish relative. But she woke up with the accent, changed, a piece of her put in place that wasn’t there before. It wasn’t real, but she believed it was.  
  
But here’s the thing. The woman on the news didn’t know where her Scottish accent came from; all she knew was that it didn’t belong. She knew that it wasn’t real. But as far as Jared’s concerned Jensen was,  _is_ , real. Jared remembers being five and thinking Jensen was the tallest boy he’d ever met. Jared remembers being twelve and thinking Jensen was the fastest, the strongest, the bravest. He can taste foods they’d shared together, feel hot summer days and frigid winter nights. Nurses had told Jared that he would experience amnesia; he’d fallen from a great height and there was a large possibility of severe memory damage. But they’d said nothing about memory appearance, memories springing forth in his mind like he’d just lived through them. He can recall everything, every conversation to the last detail that he’d ever had with Jensen. This isn’t some freak accident. This is real. This is Jensen.  
  
The coffee taste is bitter but it comes with a strange sense of calm, so Jared drinks it, mulling over the details of his miraculous recovery, and all the moments leading up to it. He remembers nothing of being under, or of almost dying. Even the moments before the suicide attempt were blurred by tears, by the want for all of it to be over. The concrete had sprinted up to meet him so fast, even the impact hadn’t hurt. If he closes his eyes and concentrates, he thinks he can hear Jensen’s voice begging him to wake up, open his eyes, keep living, but the notion of such a memory slips away as fast as it passes by, and Jared knows he’s got nothing substantial.  
  
It sounds crazy, but Jared  _knows_  Jensen is real. Because people don’t just wake up with an entire lifetime shared engraved in their chest. People don’t just wake up with memories spanning miles and years and all measurements of space in between and not have the piece it’s all tied down to.  
  
People don’t just wake up in love--terribly raw and alive with it—with a person who doesn’t exist.  
  
That’s the worst part of this, Jared thinks. There’s a jagged hole in his chest, an ache that comes with missing someone who belongs here. Even though his last words towards Jared had been angry, had been dismissive, Jared would forgive and forget if it meant he could call Jensen right over, pick up some Thai food or that weird lactose free veggie pizza Jensen was obsessed with, and curl up and marathon Star Wars until the sun came up.  
  
The fact that he can prioritize missing Jensen over the fact that he very recently tried to kill himself, just means that Jared is more fucked up than he thought. It only adds further to the myriad of shit he’s got to deal with now that he’s once more joined the realm of the living and functional, the least of which includes his very first psychologist appointment tomorrow.  
  
It was part of his condition upon hospital discharge. They would allow him freedom if he promised to check in every 24 hours with a therapy appointment. The first, with Dr. Chad Michael Murray, is scheduled for tomorrow.  
  
Jared puts the acidic coffee down and props his chin on his knees, staring at the small doctor’s note with the specific room and schedule written down. He wasn’t stupid; Jared knew that he needed to go to therapy. It didn’t matter that they’d mind mapped him, saved his damn life. Jared was, stupidly, still the kid who decided to throw himself off the roof of his building. He was a risk to himself and nearby pedestrians.  
  
Barring suicidal tendencies, Jared’s also borderline hallucinating, if the non-existence of Jensen is anything to go by. He knows things he shouldn’t know, remembers things he shouldn’t. There’s no contact in his phone named Jensen, and when he calls the memorized number in his head, it’s a dead and non-existent number. His landlord has never seen or heard of a Jensen, nor has Jared signed in a single guest within the last six months. Jared’s got no way of knowing how he woke up completely fine, give or take a few memories.  
  
All Jared knows is that he woke up one morning, after several weeks in a coma, and didn’t want to kill himself anymore. The fact of that is startling and incredible all on its own. It’s an instant fix that, like everything else going on right now, doesn’t quite feel real.  
  
Jared doubts even Dr. Chad Michael Murray will be able to explain  _that_  in one fell swoop. He scoffs at the thought.  
  
You wake up enough days thinking ‘I want to die’ and you start to trick yourself into thinking it’s a permanent fixture of your personality. Like a disliking for licorice, or a preference for hot weather over cold. Like brown hair or hazel eyes, a part of him. Jared had been like…  _this_  for so long that it felt to be the only part of his identity he was sure of.  
  
Being suicidal is funny like that.  
  
Funny in how it hurts, funny in how all it takes is one word, or a misstep in day to day life to progress from fine to tottering on the edge of self-destruction.  
  
Photographs scatter as Jared crosses the apartment, leans against the window near the fire escape. He clambers out, despite being warned that it might tempt him into another suicide attempt. He didn’t feel particularly volatile in this moment, the melancholy of night more soothing than agitating. The metal of the fire escape is wet and ice cold from the rain, but Jared leans against it, looks out over the city.  
  
There aren’t any birds out at this hour. He wishes there were; the silence would be easier to bear with the whisper of wings woven in.  
  
Jared can remember—even though time laid down miles between then and now—being young, barely a teenager, and thinking the world would be better off without him. It wasn’t a question, but rather a fact, one that Jared woke up with every day on his skin like a cold sweat, chilling him.  
  
It hurt to think about, that he’s lived with this as long as he has. Sometimes Jared looked at himself in the mirror, took in all the details: the muddy colored eyes, the dip of his nose, the mole right next to it. He was always so surprised to find how tall he actually was. It seems like his spine should be bowed, shoulders bent, bird bones broken with the weight of what he’s carried his whole life—the unmistakable notion of perpetual loneliness. No one wanted him, no one loved him. And the only person who ever could, didn’t appear to exist.  
  
What was even stranger was the way it stopped so suddenly. People don’t just wake up from this shit  _cured_  and yet Jared was, inexplicably fine. It was like the mental illness had suddenly closed up shop and went to roost elsewhere.  
  
Being suicidal before Jared tried to kill himself didn’t  _feel_  like an illness, despite what the doctors and brochures were all telling him. He wasn’t sick, at least not to himself. He was just a kid who woke up some times and thought ‘things would be easier if I were just dead.’ Wanting to be dead isn’t fucking cancer, in Jared’s not so professional opinion. It’s a personality quirk, at best.  
  
Jared can remember the first and only shrink he ever visited (on a lark, after the first time Jensen had ever seen him cut, because it had scared the two of them badly enough that Jared was willing to do anything if he didn’t have to see that look on Jensen’s face ever again). A balding baby boomer with thick glasses and about twenty degrees and certificates on the wall asked Jared if he thought about suicide, thought about how he would kill himself, spent long hours dwelling on the intimate details as one would a really good dream.  
  
The question had been ridiculous enough that Jared had given some bullshit answer, walked out of the office, and never came back. Because honestly, what kind of crap was that? There was nothing romantic or worth fantasizing about suicide. Jared didn’t think longingly of pills or rivulets of blood leaking from his wrists. People seemed to have this weird fucked up notion that being suicidal was all about the fucked up process of dying, of enjoying offing yourself.  
  
It wasn’t. It was just about wanting the fucked up pain to be over. When Jared day dreamed, he day dreamed of the black, the quiet, the peace he’d hopefully find when it was all over.  
  
The most pathetic part was probably the fact that Jared couldn’t even off himself correctly. All those years of fucked up pain and he couldn’t even get the job done.  
  
Story of his life, really.  
  
And fuck, Jared doesn’t even  _remember_  any of what happened when he was under that could make him better. Just that he woke up okay. That he was, by all medical standards, okay. He had a therapist appointment tomorrow. He had access to medications. He, Jared Padalecki, the kid who jumped off a building because nobody could ever want him, was okay.  
  
Not that Jared’s one to not believe in the miracle of near death experiences, but this seems a bit on the nose.  
  
Rain begins to pour down in the miserable steady rate that’s only native to Seattle, plastering Jared’s hair to his skull, murking up his eyes as he blinks upward. He hasn’t showered since getting out of the hospital yesterday morning, so even the rain feels clean. It’s always raining here, or at least it seemed that way to Jared. The only times he can’t remember rain were times when he was with Jensen, sipping coffee by that one café next to the photo print shop on 4th, or taking the ferry across the bay. It didn’t rain when Jensen spent the night and woke up in Jared’s bed.  
  
Funny—Jared doesn’t have a single memory of Jensen in the rain. Maybe that was because all things miserable seemed background noise.  
  
It’s late. He needs to go inside, change, and get some sleep before he trudges to the doctor’s office tomorrow. His bed will be empty and so will the photographs but maybe he will wake up and he’ll be back in the hospital with Jensen right there beside him, and this will all have turned out to be a very strange, very scary dream.  
  
His clothes land with a wet slap on the floor as Jared strips them off and reaches for things more warm and dry. He shakes his hair out of his eyes, towels himself down from sopping to damp. He stares at his reflection for the first time since getting out of the hospital, for the first time since throwing himself off a rooftop, for the first time since he let Jensen walk right off the pages of this book.  
  
There are stitches just below his hairline, bruises all over his arms from IVs, multiple bandages from where they cut and sewed and fixed. His skin is a bit paler, eyes wider, hips narrower.  
  
He is still unmistakably tall.  
  
\--  
  
Dr. Call-Me-Chad Murray is, despite Jared’s best efforts to the contrary, an extremely likeable person from the get go. Jared was prepared, as with most so called ‘professionals’ for Dr. Murray to be some middle aged condescending asshole who wrote Jared off as depressive and subscribed meds and dismissed him within the hour.  
  
Chad is quite the polar opposite, and Jared is pleasantly surprised by how fast they take to each other. He’s just as skinny and just as snarky as Jared, but there’s an understanding in the blue of his eyes that makes Jared feel relaxed for the first time since the jump. Within moments, introductions are made, and they hit it right off.  
  
It’s weird, but Jared knows within seconds of meeting Chad that if this were another life, if Jared wasn’t sitting on a plush for-patients-only couch and Chad wasn’t making notes on a clipboard, they could easily be best friends. The kind of best friends that get drinks after work, that play wingman for each other. Not best friends in the way that Jensen and Jared are, because truth be told Jared isn’t sure if him and Jensen were ever best friends. That seemed too simple a name for it.  
  
But Chad? Chad is a guy Jared could be best friends with. Chad is a guy that, if he weren’t so fucked in the head, Jared would want to spend any extended time with. He’s a crackup and what’s better: he seems to genuinely enjoy Jared’s presence, not just put up with it because listening to Jared is what brings home the bacon.  
  
Their first session begins with a conversation about bands and music that takes up most of the hour, and when Jared walks out of there, he’s got a post it with two record stores he’s supposed to check out on Chad’s explicit request.  
  
The second session is a bit deeper than that. They talk smack for a bit, before settling into a slightly awkward silence where Chad looked at Jared and said, rather bluntly, “Dude, why are you here?”  
  
“You’re the doctor,” Jared shrugs, “shouldn’t you be telling me?”  
  
“Have you wanted to kill yourself since you woke up?”  
  
“No. Not once.”  
  
“So, why are you here? What do you want to accomplish in these sessions? I can only do so much. You’ve got to have an end goal.”  
  
Answers are the only thing Jared wants, only he’s not entirely sure which questions he should be asking that won’t get him thrown into a straightjacket. Technically, he has been told all the important details.  
  
He had been in an accident, attempted suicide by leaping from his apartment building rooftop. In an absolute fucking miracle of wonder, he’d managed to escape the entire ordeal with nothing but a broken arm and three ribs, and a helluva fractured skull. All of which had pretty much healed while he’d been asleep. A neighbor saw him jump, called an ambulance. Jared didn’t leave a will and testament, Jared didn’t even leave a fucking suicide note, just the casual assumption an empty apartment with photography tools and a cell phone in his pocket with three numbers dialed into it would be enough. His mother’s, no answer. His brother’s, no answer. And Stephen’s, a voicemail, with no returned call. His parents had both been alerted when he was admitted to the hospital, but they had declined to come. Jeff was on the other side of the world traveling with his girlfriend, and couldn’t be bothered to spend the money on the return ticket. Those are the fact, or at least, the facts as Chad revealed them.  
  
Jared looks at his life and kind of gets why he killed himself, in an offhand apathetic way. He wouldn’t make that same decision now, but he gets it.  
  
He wants answers, but he’s not entirely sure Chad can give them to him. Chad’s probably got no clue about the imaginary person that Jared’s in love with, no idea how to cure someone who woke up from a mind mapping with memories, emotions, wants, that aren’t real.  
  
“Do you believe in soul mates, Chad?”  
  
Chad tips back in his chair, “Give me enough tequila shots and a curvy enough brunette, and baby you bet I do.”  
  
Jared rolls his eyes. “Be serious.”  
  
“Jared, are you trying to tell me you’re in love with me? Am I that good?”  
  
“Cut it out,” Jared laughs, then quiets, staring out the window to grey skies, birds seeking shelter on telephone wires and rooftops. “When we lived out in Ventura, our next door neighbor was this old woman next door, Pattie Fung. Chinese. She used to tell me and my big brother old fables and stories whenever she babysat us, mostly for entertainment, sometimes to teach us a lesson. Anyhow, there’s an old Chinese myth, about soul mates. They say that soul mates are essentially two people, attached by a long red string, a string tied by the gods. That’s what it’s called, the red string of fate. And the two people it’s tied between, they’re destined to be together in some way. Friends, lovers, but together.”  
  
“Do you believe that myth?”  
  
Jared thinks of the memories locked in his brain, the ghost in his life, haunting his every move. It sounds crazy,  _is_  crazy, but if Jared were to put stock in this story of what Pattie Fung told him when he was young and naïve and believed everything, he’d say that’s what this feels like. His soul mate, the person he’s meant to be with in any means, isn’t here. But Jared can  _feel_  him, as subtle as the gentle tug of a fated red string about his wrist if such a thing were real.  
  
“I believe there’s someone out there who needs me. Or at least, I need him. So I’m here because I want to get better, so I can find him, so I can be with him.”  
  
Chad’s lips pull upward in a slow smile. “Alright then, Jay. I say we’ve got ourselves a good starting point. Were there other people in your life, before this soul mate? Other people you cared about?”  
  
Few, but enough that there’s a story for each one. A sister who Jared used to watch sleep in her crib, sleeping one moment and dead the next, with only Jared as the witness. Parents once loving now cold, declining to even speak to Jared. A brother who loved Jared but didn’t know how to get around the differences between them, from Jared’s sexuality to the fact that Jared was with Megan when she died. Jeff flew half across the world as soon as he graduated high school and save for the occasional postcard on holidays, he didn’t much call. After the family, a smattering of ex-boyfriends, and a few people whose company had been convenient but not close in high school. There was no one in Jared’s life who really knew him, really cared about him.  
  
And the only person who does, well, Jared’s pretty sure by this point that he’s a figment of his imagination. If Jensen is real, Jared’s sure going to have a hell of a time convincing Chad that Jared’s not just stark raving mad. Better to keep quiet, sort through the other junk in his head, and then see what Jared’s newly made friend slash doctor has to say about impending hallucinations and phantom memories.  
  
He’ll hold off, for now.  
  
\--  
  
Or at least, that’s what he tries to tell himself.  
  
For the fourth night in the row the woman in white stalks his dreams, and Jared goes into his third psych appointment bristling with lack of sleep and the coffee that he keeps drinking despite hating it. He’s barely stepped out into the world and he knows it’s a bad day. He wants to go back to lay in bed, to stare at the wall, and think about Jensen, which he recognizes are pretty much his favorite pastimes. He might as well treat himself.  
  
But he isn’t supposed to want to stay in bed all day anymore. That isn’t what someone with a second chance at life is supposed to do.  
  
He trudges into the psych ward on reluctant feet, flashing a half smile at the receptionist and bee lining straight for the door to Chad’s office.  
  
The second he steps in, he wishes he hadn’t.  
  
Chad’s got music playing from a small iPod speaker, and the second Jared hears what’s playing, he freezes up. His eyes dart to Chad, who’s only just now looking up and saying, “Hey J-Man, come on in, I’ll be with you right after I finish dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on this report.”  
  
“I know this song.” Ice digs into Jared’s intestines, twirling them around like spaghetti. His hands go clammy. His pulse goes galloping.  
  
“Dude, you’re a fan of Oasis?  _Sick_. My boss is like, obsessed with them or something, so we’re always playing this song in the lab, and I gotta say, it’s kind of growing on me—“  
  
Jared’s trying to listen to Chad go on, he really is. He is  _trying_ , but just over Chad’s shoulder, she’s reaching for him, whispering his name like a prayer, the echo of it pounding against the walls of his skull.  
  
She’d followed him out of his dreams and into the daylight. He really is losing his mind.  
  
“Dude? Jared, you okay?”  
  
“No.” He mutters to himself, pressing back against the wall as she edges closer, “No, no, I’m awake. I’m awake. You’re not real. I’m not crazy. I’m  _awake_.”  
  
Jared slaps himself, but she doesn’t disappear. He slaps himself again, and moves himself closer. His cheeks sting but he knows that eventually he’ll wake up, and reality will snap back into place, and  _Champagne Supernova_  will stop underscoring his every living move.  
  
Something’s wrong with him. Not just because he’s sad all the time, and not just because he tried to kill himself. Something’s wrong because Jared is seeing things he shouldn’t be seeing, experiencing sensations, missing  _people_  that have disappeared. He doesn’t know if this is some fucked up government conspiracy with him as the target or if the fall onto the hard pavement has knocked over something vital in his skull. Whatever reason, he’s fucking terrified of what’s happening to him, doesn’t know how to make it stop.  
  
He doesn’t realize he’s having a panic attack—full on, rocking back and forth panic attack because Jesus fucking Christ he is  _losing it_ —until hands like iron are clapping on his wrists, are prying them away from his face.  
  
Chad’s voice comes into perspective after few seconds, along with the hands, his voice tinny and distant like it’s coming through a walkie-talkie radio  
  
“Jared.” Chad’s tone, all its casual humor, is suddenly deadly calm, and Jared clings to the sound like a life preserver. “Jared, you need to breathe. C’mon. Slow, deep breaths. With me. Now. Inhale.”  
  
It takes him several minutes, Chad’s hands on his shoulders, holding him upright. When the black spots clear from his vision and his throat stops threatening to seal shut, Jared looks up, flushing brilliantly.  
  
The music has been turned off.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jared stutters. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”  
  
He allows the anxiety in his stomach unfurl just a bit, lets a few inches of the monster inside him peek out, sniff the air.  
  
“How long have you been having hallucinations, Jared?”  
  
“They’re not-” Jared shakes his head. “They’re not hallucinations, not really. I just have these really vivid dreams, and I—I remember things that I shouldn’t. I woke up from the surgery knowing songs I’d never heard before, having favorite restaurants I can’t remember eating at, people that—“  
  
He closes his mouth on the thought, because Chad may be open but even Jared thinks he might not be so open as to hear that Jared is in love with a missing person. Maybe for their next session.  
  
“Bottom line,” Jared says shakily, knowing Chad’s likely analyzing his every expression and word, “I think I’m sicker than I should be. I think something’s wrong with me, more than there was to start with. Ever since I woke up from my coma.”  
  
Chad’s face remains impassive, but Jared doesn’t miss the slight tick in his jaw.  
  
\--  
  
_Present_  
  
Gen is going to throw up.  
  
Normally she considers herself to be a pretty composed person, because years as a mind mapping protégé plus a lifetime of traumatic events have allowed her the presence of mind to keep her wits about her. But right now, staring at Dr. Morgan, she is most certainly going to throw up.  
  
“What are you saying?” She pinches the bridge of her nose, grasping for some fact or statistic or plucky idea to get them out of this. “You’re saying we’re supposed to just let him  _die_?”  
  
“They operated on him as much as they could, without inflicting further damage to the spinal cord, which as you know has already suffered from the injury that has resulted in paraplegia. It was a ruptured cerebral aneurysm, one that we managed to nip in the bud pretty fast, but despite a complete physical recovery, and retention of all currently functioning nervous systems, Dr. Ackles has not yet woken up.”  
  
“You don’t think I fucking know that?” Gen spits, and she doesn’t mean to feel so defensive but the world has tilted on its axis. She’s barely grasping the reality of the situation, keeps waiting for Dr. Ackles to sit up in the basin, dripping wet all over the floor of the lab and bark, ‘Cortese, grab me some coffee, stat!’  
  
It’s been three days since he’d been rushed to the hospital after she’d found him in the aviary. Three days, and he hasn’t once opened his eyes.  
  
Gen would know- she’s pretty much stayed by his side the entire time, and she’s tried everything. She’s Called him for hours, put  _Champagne Supernova_ on repeat and blasted it from the intercom speakers in his hospital room. She’s run herself ragged poring over research, contacting any of Jensen’s colleagues or previous students that might know some offhand trick to wake him up. Even Chad helped, staying up late with her in the medical library, running tests on Jensen, but to no avail. Now he sits, uncharacteristically quiet, across from her at the conference room table.  
  
“I’ve tried waking him up. I’ve tried everything apart from going into his mind myself. He’s not waking up.” She grinds her knuckles into the table, steadying herself in the repetition of the words. “He’s not waking up, no matter what we do.”  
  
Chad doesn’t add to that in the silence that follows, just stares at the mahogany wood of the table. Dr. Morgan continues, the timbre of his voice calming despite the situation.  
  
“Well, that’s why we’re here Dr. Cortese. We just looked over Dr. Ackles’ advance directive and—“  
  
“Dr. Ackles had an advance directive?” Chad’s head snaps up, not looking the least bit apologetic for interrupting.  
  
“Yes,” Dr. Morgan continues, “And in the advance directive he specifies that once surgeries and other measures are taken to restore his health, but he still doesn’t wake up, he is to be taken off of life support exactly five days after.”  
  
“Even if his vitals are stable? Even if he just needs to rest?”  
  
“Five days after.” Dr. Morgan affirms.  
  
Gen’s stomach roils, but she forces herself to remain still instead of bolting for the trashcan over by the door. She has been through worse, so she can keep it together for now.  
  
“You’re saying we have five days until they pull the plug.”  
  
“Jensen was explicitly clear in his advance directive specifies that he be taken off life support no less than five days after entering a post-op coma.” Jeff pushes over the directive but Gen doesn’t move to look it over.  
  
“Five days?” Chad’s voice shoots up several octaves. “Is he  _insane_?”  
  
“He has his reasons.” Jeff says gently, and Gen thinks of the wedding ring Jensen wears on the chain around his neck, the simple gold band.  
  
She had figured Jensen’s wife had died in some related way to mind mapping, there were clues left everywhere. But Jensen’s number one rule of no emotional attachment to the patient was the burning cause behind it. She wish she had known, she wish he’d told her what to do if something like this ever came up, but because Gen had never asked and Jensen had never answered.  
  
“I’ve Called him a million times,” Gen says, shaken, “I played  _Champagne Supernova_  for twelve hours straight and nothing. It’s already been three days. That means we have maybe forty eight hours, likely less.”  
  
“But a Call’s never  _not_  worked, how is that even possible?” Chad talks aloud, but he’s looking to Gen for the answers, answers she doesn’t fucking  _have_ because for all the issues Jensen has, she’d never thought one of them would entail losing him.  
  
If she ever gets him to wake up, she’s going to kick his ass left and right for leaving her to do her job with more questions than answers in the first place.  
  
“I don’t know,” she mutters, “But it means that Jensen’s got no working Call, no way of finding his own way back here. That means he’s got two days to find the way out of his own maze, without the goddamn thread. Jensen’s always telling them there’s always a way out of the maze. There’s always an exit route, a way to fix the patient. She lifts her chin, sitting on the edge of her seat, “Or, we’ve got two days to pull him out ourselves, if that’d be something you’d be willing to partake in, Dr. Murray.”  
  
Chad’s eyes flick to hers, and for just a second there’s a flicker of seriousness and intent in the usually joking blue and she’s so relieved to know she’s not alone in this she almost sags in relief. She doesn’t really like Chad, doesn’t even know if she really tolerates Chad, but in this moment there’s a common goal and she knows she can trust the unyielding resolve in his eye. It’s the same resolve she feels holding up her spine, steel pins and brackets that keep her straight, make her strong.  
Chad nods. “Well then. We better get to work.”  
  
\--  
Chad had cancelled Jared’s Friday appointment. Chad had cancelled Jared’s Saturday appointment. By the time Monday comes around and Chad has cancelled this and the day before that as well, Jared’s just about had enough.  
  
In the four days he hasn’t seen Chad, he’s done nothing but drive himself crazy looking for Jensen, avoiding sleep and nightmares, trying to the best of his ability to stay calm about all of this. But Chad doesn’t even give him a referral, Chad doesn’t do jack  _shit_ , so when Monday rolls around and Chad cancels yet  _again_ , Jared really can’t help but snap.  
  
If Dr. Douchebag Murray didn’t want to deal with the poor suicidal sad sack, he could have just fucking said so, Jared thinks angrily, grabbing his wallet and keys and stomping out the door.  
  
The receptionist informs him that Dr. Murray is several floors up in the mind mapping lab, and he stomps there too. It doesn’t occur to him that this might be a closed ward, that he might actually be interrupting a procedure. He’s pissed as hell, and he wants to know what the fuck is going on.  
  
Voices in the lab make him pull up short, Chad and a woman. Jared can make out the back of her and Chad’s head as they pore over something, a chart, from the looks of it. He strains to hear her voice.  
  
“…Can proceed with treatment, but as far as we know, he’s in a medically induced coma that he is unable to pull out from. Vitals are declining.”  
  
“Well, we can’t go in, Princess so how are we supposed to fish him out?” Chad asks.  
  
“It appears that he lost it, somehow.” The woman—Princess?—says, giving Chad a sideways glare. “And don’t call me Princess.”  
  
“What are you saying, he let go of the memory that roots him to reality?”  
  
“Who knows. Maybe he forgot it. Maybe his mind destroyed it in the aneurysm in a fit of self preservation. He wasn’t in under the drug when he passed out, so I don’t know how he could use his Call, let alone manipulate it, when he’s not directly in the maze, underneath the influence of the chemical that allows us to mind map in the first place.”  
  
“But even if the Doc could, would he be that reckless?”  
  
The woman sighs. “I’ve learned long before this not to underestimate Jensen’s ability to be exactly that.”  
  
The blood drains from Jared’s face. Jensen.  
  
They have him. They have Jensen.  
  
He doesn’t even think about an entrance plan; Jared kicks open the door and bursts into the room, startling the two doctors as they burst apart. He sees them before he sees the patient, really. Sees the woman’s wavy dark hair and Chad’s shocked expression.  
  
The woman raises an eyebrow. “Murray, isn’t that  _your_  patient?  
  
“Jared,” Chad says in his same steady tone he’d used when Jared had the panic attack, like Jared is a rabid animal, “What are you doing here?”  
  
Jared’s about to answer, he really is, but his eyes slide just off to the left, behind Chad’s head and then the blood comes rushing back to Jared’s head so fast that he almost passes out.  
  
“What the fuck?” He rasps, like a dying man, stumbling across the room to the occupied hospital bed, “What the  _fuck_?”  
  
There’s no misrecognizing; it  _is_  Jensen. Even with eyes closed, with tubes in his arms and a machine keeping him breathing, Jared knows him. Missed him, god, missed him like crazy. All this time spent worrying and Jensen had been here, floors above Jared, sleeping.  
  
He rounds on the doctors, like he can protect Jensen from them. “What the fuck is going on? What happened to him?”  
  
Chad makes to try and usher Jared out of the room, when the woman speaks. “That’s Dr. Jensen Ackles. He’s the reason you’re alive. But now he’s had an aneurysm, and we’ve got 24 hours to save him before they pull the plug on his orders. So if you don’t mind, we’d appreciate the space.”  
  
Jared glares at her, ignoring the way his stomach plummets at her words. “Are you fucking kidding me? After everything I’ve been through? I’m not leaving him, not when I just found him.”  
  
He knows he’s said something wrong when the woman gasps, and Chad curses. She turns on her heel, furious. “Did you know about this, Murray?”  
  
“It’s what I tried to fuckin’ tell you the day he collapsed, Cortese, but you wouldn’t listen,” Chad snaps, completely acting as if Jared isn’t even there. “I think Dr. Ackles left behind fingerprints. The kid’s seeing things that don’t belong in his head, information he shouldn’t have. It’s like fucking Collins all over again—“  
  
“Jensen is nothing like Collins, how dare you—“  
  
“I’m just calling it like I see it, Princess. Not my fault you were too busy kissing Jensen’s ass to listen to me at a time that we probably could have saved him, if it’s linked to this--“  
  
“Oh? So it’s  _my_  fault now?” She laughs harshly. “That’s rich, coming from the intern who literally screws up everything so I have to recheck all the charts.”  
  
“Stuck-up Princess—“  
  
“Arrogant prick—“  
  
“Shut up!” Jared yells, loud enough that both their mouths close with a snap. “This is not about you,” he points at Cortese, “Or you!” He points at Murray. “He needs fucking help, before your twenty four hours are up and he dies. And I need fucking  _help_  you asshole, you’re supposed to be there to help me through the fact that I tried to kill myself!”  
  
He doesn’t mean to shout so furiously, but the pit of anxiety and confusion that’s been knotting in his stomach for days has just burst forth. He doesn’t care that he sounds like a fucking lunatic yelling at the doctors in a hospital, doesn’t care that it’ll probably get him pumped full of sedatives. Maybe then he’ll get some fucking sleep without nightmares about the woman in the white dress, maybe then he’ll get some  _answers_ , or at least someone who’s going to actually help him because  _fuck_  Chad. Maybe then they’ll quit fucking bickering and  _save Jensen’s fucking life_.  
  
Jared opens his mouth to apologize for the conniption when one of the black screens explodes with a fluorescent splash of color like a firework, and a small chirrup of a tone interrupts Jared’s tirade. The room falls silent, the two doctors and Jared staring at the monitors.  
  
“Um,” says Jared, “What exactly—“  
  
“Murray,” Gen whispers, the blood draining from her face, “Please tell me you saw that.”  
  
“Psychological response. Not enough for a coherent thought or full on emotion, but a response holy shit. Jared.” Chad says quickly. “I’m going to need you to do that again.”  
  
“Do what?” Jared shifts uneasily.  
  
“Yell at me. Call me a fucking douche-schnozzle. Threaten to kick my ass. Just do it.”  
  
And that gets Jared’s temper kicking up all over again. They are running out of  _time_. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m here with some serious fucking problems and you want me to call you names? Fuck you, Chad. And fuck your therapy, I’ll figure this out on my own.” Jared turns on his heels and makes straight for the door when a small hand snags him by the elbow, yanking him back.  
  
“You’re going to save him.”  
  
“I-” Jared stops short. “What?”  
  
“Think about it Murray,” Cortese says, sweeping her dark hair up into a high ponytail, jittering with enthusiasm. “If you’re right, and this kid has fingerprints, he won’t have a problem getting into Jensen’s mind. In fact, there will probably be less resistance, when you think about, less of a chance Jensen’s mind will notice him lurking.”  
  
“We put him in.” Chad nods, reaching for a dry erase marker. “How much time could we give him, being inexperienced at this at all? Three hours? Five?”  
  
“We’d never get the Board to agree to it.” Cortese shakes her head. “The FDA would be up our assess—“  
  
“So we don’t tell them.” Chad shrugs. “We sneak Jared in after closing hours on the ward, we put him in with Jensen, and then the next morning, when they pull the plug, wham bam thank you ma’am Jensen’s all better, and we can get Jared answers.”  
  
“But will he agree to it?” Two heads snap into Jared’s direction.  
  
“You-you’ve got the wrong guy.” Jared presses his back closer to Jensen’s body, fingers brushing, and the monitors spasm with color and sound again. “I’m not a mind mapper, hell, I’m not even a doctor. I—I don’t know the first thing about this. If you send me in there, I’ll fuck up, I know I will, and I’ll kill him.”  
  
“Nonsense.” Chad waves Jared’s worries away. “Jensen’s the leading expert in this science in the country. All we have to do is have you get to him. Once you’re with him, he can help lead you guys out. I know he can. And I know you can. You’re smart, Jared. You can do this.”  
  
They’re both looking at him so optimistically, like scrawny, sad Jared is the answer to their problems and he really doesn’t know how to respond. He can barely handle taking care of himself without catastrophe on a good day, how the hell is he supposed to get to Jensen and save his life?  
  
“I don’t understand.” Jared shrinks under the intensity of their hopeful stares. “Why can’t you guys get him? Aren’t you the trained professionals?”  
  
Dr. Cortese and Chad exchange a dark look before facing off with Jared. Chad looks embarrassed, but Cortese explains it simply, small hands punctuating her words. “We can’t. The two of us have worked in close quarters with Jensen for too long. Even with our exerted control, we have formed…unexpected emotional attachment to Dr. Ack—to Jensen. Said emotional attachment could kill not only us if we enter his mind, but him too. “  
  
“But you said I have…prints? Doesn’t that mean I’m connected to Jensen too?”  
  
“Even if you do have a mental connection with Jensen—you don’t have an emotional one with Jensen.” Chad elaborates. “It’s impossible, the two of you’ve never met.”  
  
This should be the part where Jared says something, where he mentions that that is in fact a lie, that he has met and knows Jensen Ackles in every sense of the word.  
  
Dr. Cortese steps forward, voice kind. “You’re the only one who’s been able to invoke a response from Jensen’s brain. There’s been little to no activity, until you walked to that door. That has to mean something, his response to you. It has to mean that you can do this. Please do this.”  
  
Jared doesn’t know how to let her down gently, not when she’s looking at him so kindly. There are a million questions swarming in his head: how Jensen managed to go their whole lives without telling Jared he was a doctor. Why Jared could remember every bit of his time spent with Jensen, but none of Jensen in his head, convincing him to wake up. If Cortese was right, and Jensen did save his life, that also begs the question of how the hell Jensen mind mapped him given their emotional relationship, given Jared’s attachment.  
  
The only thing he can think of to explain it is the possibility of Jensen having no emotional attachment at all, of being to walk right into Jared’s mind and fix him without one mishap because he just didn’t care anymore. It would explain why Jared woke up alone. Why Jared has spent the week alone.  
  
He won’t get answers unless Jensen is alive and kicking. And if Jared walks out of this room, out of the hospital, Jensen will die. He will get neither answers nor Jensen.  
  
Jared would rather dive straight into Jensen’s head and end up dying with him then walking away and leaving him to die in the process. You jump I jump. Jensen had meant it when he’d said it, and Jared would be an asshole to not follow through on his end of that.  
  
He glances over at Jensen, the pale shadows underneath his eyes, the chapped edge of his bottom lip. He looks like hundreds of mental images Jared has locked in his head, visions of Jensen sleeping, on his couch, in his car, in Jared’s bed. He’s still the exact same. Only now, there’s a chance he might not wake up.  
  
Even if Jared is just crazy, even if he has absolutely no fucking idea what he’s about to walk into, he can’t just do nothing.  
  
“Alright.” He nods tersely, grinding his teeth in an effort to steel himself, looks to the doctors. “Tell me what to do.”


	8. Chapter 8

 

What occurs in the following handful of hours is either the most brilliant thing Gen will ever do in her career, or the most stupid.  
  
Whether brilliant or stupid, there’s definitely no argument that it is, without a doubt, the batshit craziest.  
  
It doesn’t help that the kid, Jared, is literally full of questions. She gets halfway through an explanation on how to enter a mind when Jared interrupts with five different questions, all originated on the why and how of the situation, the origin of mind mapping, the kind of stuff that Gen frankly does not have the time to deal with.  
  
“Jared,” she says, strained. “I appreciate your curiosity, I really do. But these are all questions that I can answer  _after_  Jensen is awake. I promise.”  
  
“But what if one of the memories is a pop quiz about mind mapping, and I fail, and his mind eats me alive?”  
  
“The mindscape isn’t like dreams,” Gen says firmly. “Everything that you’re going to see in Jensen’s mind, every place you go, is going to be real. And I can assure you that Jensen has no memory of a quiz on ‘Why the mind takes the shape of a maze’.”  
  
“What about that exam he gave us our first week of interning?” Chad quips, head popping up from where it’s buried in studying previous case files.  
  
“Dammit,” Gen swears, vowing to punish Jensen for that one when he gets out of it.  
  
\--  
  
They hole up in the lab for as long as regular hospital hours allow. But mind mapping, because of the exhausting procedures, remains typically a nine to five shift, sometimes longer depending on the emergency of the case. After something Chad refers to as Intern-Gate, Jensen had mandated that hours be kept to nine to five under his strict supervision. According to Chad, Jensen’s entire first intern class had dropped out, something about a serial killer on the loose. Jared couldn’t exactly be sure, Chad was in the midst of shoving a sub sandwich in his face when he told the story.  
  
“Can you get rid of a memory?” Jared asks, digging in to his own sandwich from the hospital cafeteria.  
  
“Sort of,” Gen explains. “Jensen has only ever done it once, and he doesn’t really like to talk about it. All I remember him mentioning was that it’s extremely painful, because you’re removing the thread from yourself. It’s essentially like amputating a limb.”  
  
“And what happens to the memory once you do it?”  
  
“Indifference, I would imagine. Extreme apathy towards the memory you severed. To be honest I wouldn’t know, it’s not really something I care to experiment with. Why do you ask?”  
  
“Just wondering.” Jared mutters, the woman in white flickering across the edge of his thoughts.  
  
\--  
  
It goes like this for hours, and when the lab closes Chad leads Jared to a small hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, where they order Jared a triple espresso ‘to build up his strength’ and continue to quiz him on the varied details and risks when dealing with Calls, threads, transgressing between memories. It’s enough to make his head hurt, the overload of information. But he doesn’t get frustrated, doesn’t complain, even when Chad and Gen take turns quizzing him, over and over and over again, until a five pm espresso shot becomes a midnight latte, and the trek back to sneak into the hospital.  
  
The mind mapping ward is empty by the time they reach it, only few nurses puttering around, none of them paying Gen and Chad any heed as they march Jared back to the lab, stealthily swiping Gen’s keycard and locking themselves in.  
  
“Right,” Gen says once the doors close. “We have approximately nine hours, maybe ten, if the nurses are running behind schedule to come and pull Jensen’s plug. “I’m going to get Jensen. You,” she points at Jared. “Strip. And you,” she points at Murray. “Keep him calm.”  
  
Then she pushes the doors open, exits into the dark hallway for the patients’ rooms.  
  
“Why does the mind mapper lie in the tub while the patient gets the nice soft bed?” Jared asks petulantly, eyeing the massive basin in the lab with a wary eye.  
  
“Because you’re the asshole that’s about to break into his mind,” Chad explains, “The synaptic currents needed to transport you are only possible when immersed in the liquid.”  
  
“What exactly…do you pour into the tub?”  
  
“Probably best if we don’t tell you,” Chad says, patting Jared on the back. “Now you heard the woman. Strip.”  
  
There’s no time to feel self conscious about his half naked body. Jared’s about to go play rescue mission in someone else’s head. That covers about all the self-consciousness needed.  
  
Gen enters a few minutes later with Jensen, and Jared tries not to stare but he can’t help it. If this falls to shit, if this is the last time he sees Jensen, he wants to look his fill, get as much of a moment as he can before hurtling to his uncertain end.  
  
“I need to get you hooked up to the IV and the monitors,” Chad says softly, and Jared jumps to action, deciding that it might be better if he doesn’t have the image of Jensen on life support be the last thing he sees. “Hold out your arm please.”  
  
Jared closes his eyes, tells himself this is going to be a comfort.  
  
Ten minutes later he’s standing in a bathtub that submerses up to his calf, electrodes attached to his skull, liquids feeding into his circulation system, trying not to have another panic attack. Gen must sense that, because she hums as she checks the charts and dosages one more time, a tuneless song that spreads over him like a balm on a wound.  
  
“You’re going to feel a little bit of cold, Jared, but that’s normal,” Gen says soothingly, pressing the syringe into the IV tube. “Just lay back, and close your eyes. It’s like falling asleep, I promise.”  
  
“Like falling asleep,” Jared repeats, more to himself than to actually confirm he’s paying attention. He kneels down and stretches his legs out, letting the solution rush at his body, cover his skin. He looks up at Chad and Genevieve, who are standing on either side of the tub, looking down at him with perfectly neutral expressions. But he can tell, by the way Chad’s fingers are twitching at his sides and how Gen has chewed her bottom lip near bloody, that if he lets on any inclination that he doesn’t want to do this that they’ll stop everything. He’s got to commit to this flimsy idea that he can save their mentor, that he can save the one person in the world who’s ever known him.  
  
“If I don’t wake up,” Jared says slowly, “I don’t have anyone who will care much about the news. So don’t worry about a funeral. Just, uh, spread my ashes at my baby sister’s grave. She’s in a plot over in Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura. I know it’s a bit of a drive from Seattle but, I figure you guys will owe me.”  
  
Chad scrubs a hand through his hair. “Jared, you don’t—“  
  
“Too late,” Jared jokes. “See you on the other side, Houston.”  
  
He lays back in the tub, until every part of him but his face is submersed underneath the sloshing liquid inside.  
  
Their voices are muffled under the solution, and so Jared lets his eyes flutter shut, seeing no point in carrying on a one sided conversation. Besides he’s not really going to need them open wherever he’s headed. Water sloshes about his chin, surprisingly warm, and he focuses on that, tries not to think about the drug slipping like ice into his veins, the numbing almost sedated sense of calm slipping over him even as his heart threatens to pound its way out of his chest.  
  
Just like falling asleep, he thinks absentmindedly, the drug sonorous and cool inside him.  
  
Just…  
  
Like…  
  
Falling...  
  
\--  
  
They wait for two minutes, watching as Jared’s heart rate slows to the telltale inside-the-mind rhythm, before Chad turns to Genevieve.  
  
“I really hope we didn’t just fucking send that kid to his own death.”  
  
“Yeah,” Gen mutters, scrounging her pocket for spare change so she can grab a coffee and settle in for the long haul. “Yeah, me too.”  
  
\--  
  
  
The thoughts do not dart like rabbits, as Chad so nicely put it.  
  
They slither and attack, like eels, slippery and impossible to snatch in the pressing darkness, thick, ocean-like abyss. Jared’s lungs constrict with the notion that he may fail, and he has no way of getting out of here if he simply fails. They told him how to get in, they didn’t mention anything about an exit plan. On purpose possibly?  
  
He waits and waits, letting the thoughts nip at his clothes and whip on by on scurrying feet and flapping wings. They feel  _feral_ , these thoughts, raw and throbbing with urgency and panic. It takes what feels like eons, distinguishing one thought from the next, having enough presence of mind to finally close his palms around one, pressing it between his hands until it sinks into him, becomes part of him, absorbs into his system.  
  
Please work, he thinks, cradling the thought to his chest. Please god  _please_  work.  
  
And then, like clockwork:  
  
_Rain_. Jared feels it, falling hard and fast on his skin. Not only rain, but sleet. Choppy ice water battering at his skin, sinking through to the center of him and everything is  _cold_  and wet. He opens his mouth on a gasp and inhales the scent, curled along with the scent of pine and asphalt and gasoline and…is that…blood?  
  
He opens his eyes, and the rain falls right into them and he’s laid flat on his back, the sudden and startling impact of it crushing the breath right out of his lungs.  
  
He gasps, and the mere effort of breathing hurts like Jared’s inhaling steel wool. It rushes out in a wheeze. The sky is dark as he blinks up at it, staring at the rain drops rushing down to slap his face. He blinks it all out of his eyes, trying to find some semblance of a moon positioned in the sky, get a sense of what time it is. Then he thinks, how stupid, he’s dying. He doesn’t need to know what time it is. That’ll be for the paramedics to suss out when they discovered him bled out on the rainy pavement.  
  
Ears ringing, he strains to hear anything above the pelt of rain, the rattle of his own breath. He has to get up, he has to get up and help her. It’s so cold, he’s so wet. His hands scrabble at asphalt, coming up bloodied, with glass bits in his fingertips. There’s a car, not too far away. The car is smoking. Maybe if Jared can get to the car, he can call for help, he can find Jensen. Jensen. Where is Jensen? The car is still smoking, the front window smashed clean open, the roof crushed as if it had flipped several times. Had Jared gone through the windshield? Or had he flown out the side door? Where is Jensen?  
  
That thought trips over itself, freezing.  
  
The realization rushes up to him in one fell swoop. Where they are, how they got there. They’d gone to the movies, and Jared had fallen asleep during the previews. The clinical trial of mind mapping of the serum, of testing on patient after patient, vying for the fund money to officially open a teaching program for the procedure, he was so close to all of it, and pushing his body to the absolute limits so he could not fail. She knew this, which was why, when he’d fallen asleep in that darkened movie theater, she’d slipped one hand over his, ever the picture of patience and understanding, of reading his damn mind, and whispered, “Baby, let’s go home.”  
  
“Oh god.” Jared rasps wetly, disoriented, in more pain than he can remember experiencing in any moment prior to this. He’s sure that the taste in his mouth in his own blood, that the liquid dripping into his eyes is such too. The pain he feels isn’t centered in one spot but multiple, trickling through his nerves like stinging acid, slower than molasses, hotter than magma, reaching up in tendrils to the tips of his fingers, locking his jaw with the sensation of it.  
  
He could have argued—she had a huge crush on that Chris Evans and had been dying to see this movie for weeks—but all he could think about was getting home, pouring over his observation notes from the day’s mind mappings, maybe jotting down a few other ideas to try in tomorrow’s work. He could have argued, but he didn’t.  
  
Jared had let her loop her arm through his and they’d climbed into the car, and he’d offered to drive.  
It had been their first winter in Seattle. Jared had heard warning of driving on those frigid roads at night, of black ice as dangerous and disguised as quicksand. Jared had heard, but he hadn’t listened.  
  
No, he thinks stubbornly, not Jared.  _Jensen_.  
  
This is Jensen’s memory. Only Jared’s the one living it.  
  
Jensen is nowhere to be seen.  
  
There’s a body on the pavement twenty feet away, long dark hair obscuring but Jared knows who exactly it is, because Jensen knows. He makes to reach for her, fingers stretching, useless at his side. If he can just get to her. Staunch the bleeding. They’re not far from the hospital. They can make it, he just has to make sure she stays alive until then.  
  
He tries to sit up. His legs won’t move. He can’t even sit up enough to move them with his own hands. The muscles of his stomach burn as he struggles to raise himself, his body a livewire in protest against his will. His head smacks back down to the pavement and he lays there in the rain, spent.  
  
“Fuck!” Jared screams in frustration, blood bubbling on his lips. He turns to the body in the street, wondering if she can hear him, praying she can. “Fuck, Lisa baby. You’ve gotta get up, Lis. Baby, look at me. Lisa, Lis. Please, just open your eyes.”  
  
The road empty, the rain is falling. He strains his ringing ears for sirens, for any passing cars that might be coming up the mountain in the midst of a storm. But there is no one, only Jared trying to breathe through cracks ribs and internal bleeding, and the pitter pat of the rain.  
  
“Lisa,” Jared sobs, and he pulls himself over to her, clawing at the asphalt and the glass, spitting blood and sleet. His legs drag underneath him, dead limbs on an otherwise useless body.  
  
If he can just get to her, if he can just stop that dark pool of blood beneath her head from growing.  
  
He crawls like a soldier through the trenches, belly scraping the pavement, soaked to the bones and biting back screams of agony. He’s nauseas with the taste of his own blood, the smell of the goddamn rain. He whispers her name like a prayer, swears that if he can get to her, if he can save her, he’ll give it all up. His fellowship, his research, his mind mapping, if he can keep her.  
  
Almost there, reaches for her with ragged fingernails, reaches to brush her hair back from her face like he’d done every morning when they woke up together.  
  
The floor plummets away and Jared goes with it, sinking. She doesn’t fall with him.  
  
They’re in a white room, unfurnished, and Lisa’s hand is so small in his own.  
  
“I definitely want a green color scheme for the room. Because frankly, yellow is hideous, and I’m not buying that whole pink means girl blue means boy crap that all the other moms do,” she says, eyeing the room like she already knows what she wants to do it, how she’s going to set it up.  
  
“You don’t have to rush into planning ahead. We could always make it a guest room, Lis.” Jared slips an arm around her waist to pull her snug against him, brush a thumb against the flat of her stomach. “There’s still plenty of time to decide which gender neutral color scheme our hypothetical child deserves. Besides, you’re not even pregnant.”  
  
“Yet.” She smiles, the look in her eyes all too knowing. “But you know me, I’m unstoppable once I put my mind to something,” she leans back against Jared’s shoulder looking out at the backyard, “And just think, Jen, our baby will be able to see the aviary from here. They’ll wake up every morning to the sound of my birds.”  
  
“Your birds.”  
  
“I am the ornithologist in this relationship, am I not?”  
  
Jared looks out over a sprawling forest, a small winding pathway through the brush that leads to the aviary that he’s got scars and calluses from building. It’s far off, that future with a child, but it is real and it is theirs.  
  
The love he feels for her smarts like the tenderest bruise, and he revels in the feeling, kissing her hair and watching as the clouds huddle together, and the rain begins to fall.  
  
The memory changes.  
  
He sits immobile in his wheelchair, listening to higher ups and backers debate whether he’s got the presence of mind to save his own wife’s life.  
  
“She’s been under for far too long, it is only fair for us to let Dr. Ackles do his job.”  
  
“Dr. Ackles has never before operated on a patient that he knows personally. The results could be catastrophic.”  
  
“Or they could save her  _life_ ,” Jeff Morgan offers, “Surely, with all Dr. Ackles has done for this hospital, you can allow him to at least try.”  
  
The memory changes again, only Jared knows the script this time.  
  
Lisa, the woman in white from his nightmares, reaching for him, screaming for him, as he pulls and claws at the threads around his wrists, cutting off the connections, watching the color and life bleed from the memories, sobbing until his chest is a raw and empty cavern, and his heart beats so quietly he isn’t even sure it exists at all. Her screams still but off abruptly, only this time when he goes to walk away from her, the floor falls beneath his feet.  
  
The memory changes.  
  
Lisa’s mind becomes Genevieve’s only it is not a Genevieve Jared recognizes. This Genevieve is a tiny, emaciated thing. Her eyes are sunken, her wrists knobby, her bones swelling and pushing at the surface of her pale skin. She trembles when Jared approaches of her, won’t let him come more than five feet close.  
  
“Are you Genevieve?” Jared asks, trying to will the intent that he means no harm. “You’re Genevieve, aren’t you?”  
  
The noise she makes is inhuman, a garbled wail of terror and pain that makes the hairs on Jared’s arms stand straight up, gives him pause to look around the mind,  _really_  look around it.  
  
This isn’t a mind left to its own devices, driven to desperation for survival in the way that Lisa’s is. It’s a mind that’s been tortured, the contents upended, the memories tampered with, stained with manic violence, invoking an innate fear of the quietude, of the stillness, like waiting for the real monsters to come out from under the bed.  
  
“W-who are you?” Genevieve says after a long moment of struggling for words, looks ready to lunge for his throat, do whatever it’ll take to survive. “Don’t come any closer, I’ll kill you, I swear to god I’ll scratch your eyes out.”  
  
“He’s not here anymore,” Jared says, knows that if he says the name he’ll lose her to another panic that will completely turn over her mind. “He’s gone. You’re safe.”  
  
The memories hidden in the walls of her mind turn dark, jagged, feral, angry at such a suggestion as much as they are joyous. Dr. Collins may not be in here anymore, but the fingerprints he’s left remain like scars, appendages that still function without the body itself. Jensen’s amazed there’s any pieces of the girl left, let alone an entire person.  
  
They stare at each other for a long time, sizing one another up. When she takes a step closer to him, her feet bleed.  
  
“Are you the one who showed him how to do what he did to me?” Her voice is hoarse from crying.  
  
He doesn’t have to ask who ‘he’ is; her foot prints smear crimson on the floor. “I didn’t show him. But I am responsible for it.”  
  
She looks at him, calculating, a survivor through to her very core, even after everything. “If I wake up, you’re going to teach me everything you know. You’re going to make it so people like him,” she thrusts a finger at her memories, “Never exist to hurt anyone again.”  
  
“I promise.” It’s not something Jensen offers lightly when he says it, and Jared feels the gravity of those words. He hasn’t promised anyone anything since he slipped a ring on his finger years ago. “I’m sorry I let this happen.”  
  
“Don’t apologize,” Gen says fiercely. “The last thing I want is your pity.”  
  
“Then what do you want?” Jared asks, bowled over by the fight in this girl’s tiny body, the way she clenches her fists against the way her mind aches.  
  
Genevieve lifts her chin, regal, somehow feeling taller than him despite the disparity in their heights. She opens her mouth, and the memory changes.  
  
The rooftop of an apartment building, birds flocking overhead. It’s familiar,  _too_  familiar, and Jared’s just about to make a run for the edge to exit the memory when someone speaks behind him.  
  
“Jared?”  
  
Jared recognizes the voice before he even sees the face, and even before that, even before hearing him, the hairs on his arms are standing up straight. He turns so fast his neck cricks, follows the sound of that voice like it’s the only possible thing that can guide him out of the chaos he’s willingly stumbled into. He turns, and the breath he’s been holding since waking up alone in the hospital comes rushing out with sweet relief.  
  
_Jensen._  
  
He looks exactly the same, Jared’s memories hadn’t been remotely off, nor too romantic in their portrayal. He looks exactly as Jared remembers, from the crinkle of crow’s feet around his eyes to the sandy color of his hair. Jensen, who walks towards Jared with that same sturdy set of his jaw, like he’s got something he’s got to do and nothing is going to stop him from doing it. He’s so beautiful, and for maybe two seconds, Jared’s able to forget just how fucking  _furious_  he is with him.  
  
But those two seconds are all he needs to get caught up, before Jared is cocking his fast and punching the ever-loving hell out of him.  
  
It’s a flimsy punch at best, because Jared’s never really hit anyone before and Jensen’s momentum kind of throws off the impact, but it’s enough to send Jensen reeling backwards, clutching at his face, thumbing at a split lip.  
  
Jared feels that pain acutely, as if it were his own.  
  
_“Ow.”_ They say at the same time, and Jared laughs despite himself, utterly clueless as to what is going on. It makes sense, that they share these sensations, however willingly or unwillingly. They are in Jensen’s mind after all, so it would be perfectly rational that whatever Jensen feels, Jared does too.  
  
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jared asks, suddenly feeling not at all happy to see Jensen. “On  _my_  rooftop?”  
  
“What are you talking about? I was looking for you!” Jensen shouts, swinging Jared around to look at him in a better light. “God, you’ve gotta give me a minute here, Jared, I thought I’d never see you again. After I walked away, I thought for sure you’d do something crazy, hell, I don’t know, walk right off a building—“  
  
“What the  _hell_  are you talking about?” Jared repeats, staring at Jensen like he’s insane. “I  _did_  walk right off a building, Jensen. But not because you walked out. Hell, you weren’t even there!”  
  
“I’m just so glad you’re alive,” Jensen rambles, not even hearing him, “You don’t even know, I was so scared, Jared. I couldn’t  _find_  you. But you’re here. You’re alive. You stayed.” And then Jensen is cupping Jared’s face in his hands, thumbs brushing his cheeks. Only this time, instead of leaning into the touch, all Jared can think about is the calluses he can feel, and how they got there. How Jensen built a bird house with his own two hands, and how this shouldn’t be happening, how this is  _wrong_  because this Jensen, real Jensen, has Lisa.  
  
“Of course I’m alive.” Jared says, “I’m alive because you  _fixed_  me, remember? You got up inside my head, scrambled everything around, woke me back up.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Jensen frowns, his brow creasing. “What—“  
  
“Yeah, I know it’s crazy, but you have to listen to me Jensen. Now  _you_  need to wake up.”  
  
“I am awake,” Jensen says, reaching for Jared again, “I feel more awake than I have in years, God, it’s so good to see you Jared. I was so scared you were going to hurt yourself again.”  
  
The raw concern in Jensen’s voice, so genuine, so damn protective as Jared’s known him to be only his whole life, it damn near breaks Jared’s heart because he knows, in that same breaking heart, that it doesn’t matter what he feels. Because like most things in his life, Jared’s about to go and fuck it up all over again.  
  
“Jensen,” he says slowly, breathing even, “You’re not awake. You had an aneurysm, you’re in a coma, and if I don’t get you out of here in the next eight hours, the doctors are gonna follow through on your advance directive and pull the plug on you. So I know you’re confused and I know you thought you were never going to see me again but I need you to wake up, Jensen, please.”  
  
Jensen recoils from Jared, hands dropping to his sides. “I’m not awake.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Am I dreaming?”  
  
“No. Dr. Cortese and Dr. Murray sent me here to get you. We’re in your mind. You’re in a coma, and you need to wake up.”  
  
“Gen? Chad?” Jensen whispers, recognition slowly leaking into his expression, eyes going wide. “Are they okay? Why the hell did they send you?”  
  
“They’re fine. They couldn’t become because of some rule about emotional attachment. They had to send someone you’d never met in real life before.”  
  
“But…that’s insane. I  _have_  met you, Jared. I’ve known you my whole goddamn life!”  
  
“Not exactly,” Jared winces, already hating himself for what he’s about to do to them. “I’m your patient, Jensen.”  
  
The memory explodes, as if there were mines planted beneath their feet, triggered a scant few seconds after Jensen hears those words.  
  
  
\--  
  
Jared’s been under for two hours when the brain scanners on both him and Jensen burst with loud beeping and color, jolting Gen out of her cat nap in a panic.  
  
“Pulses elevated, fuck,” Chad swears, leaping over his chair to check their vitals, make sure they’re not going tachycardic.  
  
“What the fuck happened?” Gen snaps. “You were supposed to be watching them, Murray!”  
  
“I was! Their vitals were completely stable, not one deviance, then all of the sudden their brains turned into the fuckin Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade!”  
  
“Is Jensen crashing?” She shoves Chad over, checking his temperature on the monitors. “Is he having another aneurysm?”  
  
“Don’t you think our super fucking expensive state of the art mind mapping monitor would pick up on that?” Chad responds sarcastically, going over to recheck the temperature in the tub.  
  
Jensen’s fine. His pulse is high, but more like he’s running than actually crashing. She takes a step back, forces herself to steady her breathing, bites back the temptation to dissolve into a puddle of anxiety right there on the floor.  
  
“Cortese, look at this.”  
  
“Not now, Murray,” she says, massaging her temples.  
  
“Cortese, fucking  _look_ …their mind waves.”  
  
And sure enough, the blooming colors of their minds are identical—a sonogram theoretically supposed to take images of emotions, sensations, thoughts. Jensen’s steady grey now mixes with Jared’s cerulean blue, the two colors swirling together.  
  
Mind mappers usually adapt the same mind waves as the patient, as they are living the patient’s memories as they work through the maze. This…this is something she’s never seen before, never even thought possible.  
  
The monitors ping, and the mind waves are identical, the scritch and scratch of EKG recording their heartbeats. The scratching is to the same beat, like the wings of a small bird in its rapidity and frequency.  
  
“Holy shit.” Chad says, staring at the two of them. “Cortese, holy  _shit_.”  
  
“Well I’ll be damned.” Gen says, staring at the monitors.  
  
They had turned off most of the lights earlier on so as to not draw attention from circulating security and staff. Now, in the dimly lit lab, the glow of the mind monitors is pretty, reminding Gen of a time before she had nothing, back when she had everything. When she curled up with Johnny and Sarah underneath the Christmas tree, reading Harry Potter by the soft glow of colorful bulbs and bubble lights.  
  
“I fucking love this job.” Chad says softly, and his wonderment amidst the soft beauty of the moment does something strange to Gen’s innards. She chalks it up to sentimentality brought on by the sudden nostalgia and shakes her head of the thought, turning back to look over the EKG.  
  
\--  
  
If Jared weren’t so busy running flat out for his life, he’d probably be trying to kill Jensen.  
  
The rooftop had fallen away piece by piece like a line of dominoes, and it was only because Jared had grabbed Jensen’s arm and bodily yanked him forward that Jensen hadn’t fallen away with the crumbling roof, the memory tearing itself to shreds. Once they’d dodged the majority of the destruction, the memory had turned back into maze, dark corridors now cast in an eerie and predatory light.  
  
“We need to find another memory,” Jared mutters, wracking his brains for any tidbit that Gen or Chad might have dropped that might prove useful. All he can think is that they need to keep moving, seek safety in another memory where Jensen’s own mind isn’t going to attack itself out of nowhere.  
  
Jensen lopes after him silently, a bit like a lost toddler in the way he stares at him with confusion written all over his face. He might be going into shock, Jared thinks suddenly, and then panics because Gen and Chad never prepared him for  _that_. He has no clue how to deal with someone in shock, and certainly not someone whose very mind appears to be imploding.  
  
The notion kicks him while he’s already down; he was an idiot to think he could do this. Save Jensen, actually do something right for once in his life. His cheeks grow hot and when he stops short, Jensen runs smack into him, stepping on his heels.  
  
“Uh, Dr. Ackles?” Jared asks nervously, the panic inching up his throat at just how terribly unprepared he is for any of this, “I’m going to need your help picking a memory to go in. We don’t have much time—“  
  
“Jensen.”  
  
Jared huffs, really not in the mood for semantics. “Look Jensen, we don’t have much time before—“  
  
“But I don’t understand,” Jensen says, “What—“  
  
Maybe it’s the full weight of what Jared’s gotten himself into that makes him snap, or maybe it’s Jensen’s complete inability to get with the program, but for whatever reason he finds himself reeling around and slamming Jensen against one of the many walls of the maze, hard enough that Jensen’s skull smacks sharply against the glass-like surface and his teeth rattle.  
  
“Listen to me,” Jared hisses, trailing off with sudden righteous anger coursing through him because how dare Jensen. How dare Jensen leave? How dare Jensen fall apart just when Jared needs him to have it together the most? Jared’s already enough of a disaster, a no good failure of a disaster. Jensen didn’t have the  _right_  to crumble in a way that was so catastrophic, so messy so…  
  
So very Jared, if he’s being honest.  
  
“You need to get us into another memory. Stat.”  
  
Jensen blinks, and they’re in a strawberry field, the stench of fertilizer and fruit thick in the air, eradicating the smell of the open rooftop from Jared’s nose completely. Jared can’t help it—he collapses in relief, sinks his fingers into the dirt and remembers how to breathe.  
  
When he looks up, Jensen is looking back down at him, smiling slightly.  
  
“You’re here.” Jensen beams. “I don’t know how, god, I don’t even know if I want to know, but you’re here.”  
  
“Of course I am,” Jared says automatically, cursing himself afterwards. Jensen sits next to him in the dirt, sniffs in the smell of strawberries, and Jared continues. “Now, I need answers. What happened up on the rooftop? Was that you having another aneurysm? Because Gen and Chad may have given me a crash course, but they sure as hell didn’t tell me how to stop an aneurysm from inside your brain.”  
  
“You’re not in my brain,” Jensen says slowly, the earlier beaming smile widening the more Jared talks, “You’re in my mind. Nothing physical can happen to us here. It’s all mental.”  
  
The pit of dread that’s been in Jared’s stomach since the minute he realized just who Jensen is widens a little bit more. He pushes it down deeper, ignoring it.  
  
He looks around. “Are we in Ventura?”  
  
Jensen nods. “The strawberry fields my mom took us to on your eighth birthday. We picked berries all day, made jam, shortcake.” He plucks a strawberry straight off the vine and pops it in his mouth, and though it’s in Jensen’s mouth Jared tastes the slightly bruised softness of the berry on his tongue, the seeds that get stuck in his teeth.  
  
“So it’s not your memory, it’s mine?”  
  
Jensen stares off at the horizon, gaze distant. When he turns back to smile at Jared, it’s forced. “In a manner of speaking.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“C’mon.” Jensen brushes his hands on the thighs of his jeans as he stands up, swallowing the rest of the berry. “We better get a move on.”  
  
“Or what?”  
  
Jensen gives him a glance like he should have figured it out long ago. “Or this strawberry field turns into a black hole that essentially eats us alive. We gotta run, Jared. My memories, whatever’s left of them, they’re collapsing.”  
  
And sure enough, even as the sun blazes overhead, Jared can hear rain looming in, the same rain that poured the night of the car accident. Here is a place Jared only recognizes because he took Jensen there, the strawberry fields just beyond the coast. This isn’t Jensen’s authentic memory, this isn’t a memory at all. It’s a facsimile, a sham, a pretty picture show.  
  
“I’ve been wandering in these memories of us, you and I, for weeks now. Or at least, that’s what it’s felt like. I had thought I was just looking for you, that I would find you in our favorite hideouts as kid, that you had run away from me. I didn’t know…” Jensen trails off, sadness tightening about his eyes. “I see now that I wasn’t actually looking for you. I was just choosing to remain in only the spaces where you existed.” He takes a long resigned breath. “But now I see that in doing so, I left the rest of my memories to collapse without my presence. Stupid, really.”  
  
Before Jared can even think to ask because seriously  _what_ , Jensen is snagging him by the elbow and pulling him out of the strawberry fields. It’s all just as well, Jared looks back to see that go up like a minefield, just like the rooftop before them.  
  
They jog through the maze, or rather, Jensen runs gracefully while Jared feels like his lungs are collapsing with each furthered step. This may be happening inside his head, but the burning in his muscles, the air squeezing in and out of his lungs, that all feels very real.  
  
“Here we go,” Jensen exhales, “Physical therapy. Should be safe here.” Then guides Jared straight into another wall.  
  
It’s a single room, the size of a ballet studio, with mirrors, and exercise bars, and weights. There’s a wheelchair in the middle of it, and Jensen curls his upper lip at it. He walks around, sizing up the place, listening for what Jared assumes would be the sound of rain.  
  
Jared tries to stay composed, he really does. But composure only goes so far when you’ve just been informed that the mind you’re in is currently collapsing.  
  
“What the fuck do you mean your memories are collapsing?” Jared asks. “Does that happen to every patient? Did it happen to me? How come I can remember you, when Genevieve says patients can never remember their mind mappings? I want answers, Jensen, and I want them now.”  
  
“Tell me,” Jensen says, a curious light in his eyes, “When you entered my mind, where did you come out of the rabbit hole?”  
  
Jared thinks of the sleet, and the blood, and the screaming. “A car accident.” He glances at the wheelchair in the center of the room. “You lost the feeling in your legs.”  
  
“A complete spinal cord injury,” Jensen surmises. “Not the best drive I’ve gone on.”  
  
Jared stares at him, stubbornly refusing to offer more conversation until Jensen explains.  
  
Jensen sighs and leans against the wall, like the last thing he wants to do is sit in the room where he’ll be eye level with the chair he doesn’t need, not here, at least.  
  
“Here’s the thing, Jared. I can’t answer all of your questions. I may be the leading expert, but everything about this branch of science is trial and error, theory and hypothesis, with a thousand and one variables. I don’t know why you can remember me in your mind. Logically speaking, you weren’t even supposed to  _see_  me when I entered your memories, let alone interact with me. I don’t know why this happened, but I do know—or can assume as much—that every time I went into your mind and came back out, I left behind fingerprints, memories of my own behind to intertwine with memories of yours.” He pauses, the weight of the next sentence heavy on his tongue.  
  
“In doing so, I fucked up my own memories. I tied myself to you. Made you a part of my life. And when the moment came and we were down to the last second, I made a judgment call and made you the only part of my life that I’m emotionally attached to, so to speak.”  
  
It is now that Jensen stands up straight, crossing his arms over his chest. Not defensively, but as if he’s bracing for impact, and he wants to be standing when it comes.  
  
He lifts his gaze to watch Jared’s face. “I severed the last remaining connection to my life to save you, and because of that my mind is now unable to discern between what’s real and what simply happened because our mind made it so. You probably noticed that I wasn’t in any of the memories you saw when you first entered my mind. That’s because I was over in your memories, our memories, the ones that aren’t real. And in being unable to tell what’s real and not real, my memories are spreading thin, and I’m losing my identity. Because none of it’s real, Jared.”  
  
“What?” Jared whispers, “What do you mean—“  
  
Now Jensen looks legitimately upset, eyes more expressive than Jared has seen since this whole catastrophe started, “Every bit of it: the strawberry fields, the rooftop, every conversation and shared space we ever had, it’s all in our heads. Yours, and mine.”  
  
He waits for Jensen to shout ‘Gotcha!’- Any exclamation that would clear up the intent of the punch line of this practical joke, but it never comes. Jensen just looks at Jared like he pities him, like he hates himself. And Jared, Jared can’t even begin to wrap his head around this. It boasts a weight added to his shoulders that he can’t cope with on top of everything else.  
  
He starts with the simpler question, then. “So how do we save you, how do we get you out of here?”  
  
Jensen does stare at the wheelchair now, avoids Jared’s eyes entirely. “You don’t. You leave.”  
  
Jared reels. “But that’s—that’s ridiculous, that’s—“  
  
“You’ve essentially changed my entire brain chemistry,” Jensen continues in a matter of fact tone, “You are imprinted in my mind. Forever.”  
  
“That’s not  _possible_ ,” Jared says stubbornly. He doesn’t want the responsibility of this. He never did. He’s just a kid from Southern California with a shit life and nothing to look forward to but his dog and morning rain. He can’t possibly have the sole responsibility to save the most important man in modern medicine. “I can’t just leave you here to rot.”  
  
“And if you don’t? What do you think will happen to you? We’re too tightly wound, Jared. I fucked up, I got too close to you, and it fucked me up, and I’m not entirely sure that didn’t go both ways.”  
  
Jared rolls his eyes now, because he  _knows_  Jensen’s goading him into getting mad enough to take off. Because this is  _just_  the kind of self sacrificing bullshit Jensen would do. Jared’s got an entire lifetime of receipts on him: Jensen taking school detentions for beating up Jared’s bullies, Jensen offering to pay for diner meals when he knew Jared didn’t have two pennies to rub together. The guy didn’t have a selfish bone in his body, he was going to have a hard time convincing Jared.  
  
“Think about it Jared,” Jensen huffs, frustrated, “And think hard. All those memories you have of me, what are they without me? Who are you without me?”  
  
Jared takes a few steps back, reeling. What does it matter whether or not he really knew Jensen? That he genuinely cared about Jensen? Is he really that codependent and pathetic that he can’t function without him?  
  
Life without Jensen. Jared pictures it, conjures up all those Technicolor film reels. Who is he without Jensen?  
  
And then it clicks.  
  
Without Jensen, Jared was alone. Everything in Jared’s life that was miserable to begin with: his parent’s divorce, the bullies in middle school, his first break up, every single ache and pain was Jared’s and Jared’s alone. Without Jensen, Jared had lived through everything on his own. There had been no one to protect him or comfort him, or make him laugh when it seemed that things would never look up.  
  
No wonder Jared had tried to kill himself.  
  
“Fuck.” The realization squeezes something vital in his organs and Jared’s knees crack when they hit the floor surface. All those times the kids had beaten him up in the woods, Jensen hadn’t patched him up. His first time, with Stephen, hadn’t been with the almost hopeful thought that Jensen could hear him. He’d suffered through the worst years, through the divorce, through his parent’s offhanded but heavy blame. All those times he’d cried, screamed and shattered, he’d never had anyone. And he’d certainly never had Jensen. This whole time, he didn’t have Jensen. He was just alone. Alone alone  _alone_.  
  
If he walks out of here and leaves Jensen behind, he’ll return to that same life. Jared can’t think of anything worse.  
  
A bone deep shudder runs throughout the room, and he doesn’t care that he can hear rain outside of the windows, encroaching on the pair of them. He’s up in a flash, furious, anger crackling static at his fingertips.  
  
“You should have let me die,” Jared spits.  
  
Whatever reaction Jensen was expecting, it sure wasn’t that.  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“You can’t just fuck with people’s heads like that,” Jared seethes. “What kind of sadistic asshole are you?”  
  
Jensen blanches at that. “I would never knowingly hurt a patient. I thought you would wake up, and not remember a single thing. It was a special case, you were a special case, you-“ He breaks off, jittery all of a sudden, looking like he’s ready to bolt from the room, “You don’t understand, this kind of thing is a complete anomaly—“  
  
“No,  _you_  don’t understand.” Jared reels, shoving a finger in Jensen’s face. “The only reason I remember, the only reason I am alive, is because I thought you would be there waiting for me when I woke up. Because you told me you would be there no matter what. That’s what you said, Jensen, and you were full of shit to say it. I thought you were going to be there. I thought you had been there my entire life.”  
  
The sound that slips out of Jensen’s lungs washes through Jared with a wave of needle prick pain attached to it. He can hear Jensen breathing, but it’s the breath of a dying man. It sounds so hurt, but Jared brushes it off, refuses to let it burrow into his skin. He doesn’t know if the wetness on his face is his own or Jensen’s—he doesn’t care.  
  
Rain pours beside the silence, but both are equally loud.  
  
“We should get going,” Jared says with venom, kicking aside the empty wheelchair as he strolls out of the memory, the downpour hot on his heels.  
  
\--  
  
They stumble down the maze, dodging the rain around corners where they hear it, looking for an untarnished memory. A real one.  
  
It’s Jensen that breaks the silence, punctuated by their footfalls.  
  
“I don’t suppose apologies are of any use at this point.”  
  
“Not when you had promised me,” Jared responds shortly.  
  
“In all honesty, Jared, I say anything to get a patient to wake up. Just as cardiologists will defibrillate a heart, I will say anything to get my patients back to life. Losing a patient, it’s not an option.”  
  
There’s an iron clad coldness in the latter statement that makes Jared look up, but Jensen’s face remains passive, controlled, just like the rest of his mind.  
  
“You’re not the person I thought you were,” Jared says, and the notion makes Jensen startle, looking at him with wide eyes, hurt. Jared pushes aside the guilt over it, because any hurt he’s caused Jensen is a mere percentage of what Jensen has inflicted on him. He wants to hate Jensen, hate Jensen with a passion, but the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t know who to hate. Jensen, for playing the games he’d so easily fallen for, or himself, for being so naïve is to think it was so possible for someone to fall for him.  
  
Because—and only now, on the precipice of dying, can Jared admit this—he did fall for Jensen, somewhere in between five years old and flying off a roof. He fell hard. But it had all been fake, a means to the end results so Jensen could have another successful medical procedure to add to his stellar reputation.  
  
He stalks off, ready to leave Jensen alone to fend for himself.  
  
“You’re right.”  
  
Jared stops, but he doesn’t turn around. He listens to Jensen’s voice, waiting for a hint of insincerity, a smidge of a lie. After twenty four years he’s learned all the cadences of Jensen’s voice, he thought he’d know the tone when he isn’t being completely honest. He doesn’t hear it now, but then, Jared may be an entirely unreliable judge at this juncture.  
  
“I’m not the person you thought I was. There’s no way to sugarcoat that fact. But if you come with me, I’d like to show you the reality.”  
  
He glances back, and Jensen is offering a hand, eyes pleading.  
  
Jared should leave Jensen to collapse inward. But Jared knows, somewhere in the recesses of this mind, is the man who talked Jared out of himself, who gave Jared a reason to want to live. That might be a bit of a reason to stick around.  
  
He stares at Jensen’s hand, overcome with the juxtaposition of a hundred different memories. Jensen helping to pull him out of the sandbox, Jensen helping Jared climb the jungle gym when he was still too small to reach the big steps, Jensen pulling Jared off the forest floor as he bruises and bleeds.  
  
He takes Jensen’s hand, hesitantly, and any pounding of heart doesn’t matter in the first place. His feelings for Jensen were never real, it’s about damn time Jared stopped pretending they were.  
  
Their hands fit the same way. Jared even recognizes the same calluses on his knuckles. He doesn’t know quite how to feel about that.  
  
“You knew I was coming here, didn’t you?” Jensen seems to know exactly what to say, like he’d been waiting forever for Jared to hear the god’s honest truth.  
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Jensen says. “I’d hoped you would.”  
  
Jared takes that in, pointedly ignoring his heart’s reaction. “Lead the way.”


	9. Chapter 9

 

Jensen doesn’t take Jared where he was expecting to be taken. ‘The beginning’ had seemed fitting, but Jensen explains all that simply. “Grew up in a pretty ordinary family, I was the only one who left my hometown for college, and the rest is history.”  
  
They go to whatever memories look dry and warm, without rainy showers or thunderous clouds. The last thing they need to do is run through more crumbling memories that remind both of them of how exactly fucked they are.  
  
They start a long game of hide and seek in Jensen’s mind, and they start it in a chapel: elegant, small, crammed with people who have Jensen’s freckles, Jensen’s eyes. They’re all staring at Jensen, who is standing in the center of it all, next to Jared, at the top of a long rug, an aisle littered with plumeria petals.  
  
The wedding march kicks in, river rushing into strumming guitars, and Jared starts, turning to Jensen in excitement.  
  
“I know this song!” He babbles, a thousand memories of him and Jensen humming the song while folding their laundry, blasting the song in the car on the way home, “I remember—“  
  
“You remember because  _I_  remember. You know because I know.” Jensen is wearing a white tux, smooth, pressed to the point of pristine. He’s glowing, every inch with him, with an unrestrained emotion that emanates straight from his skin. Happiness, genuine and showing.  
  
It occurs to Jared, and not for the first time, that Jensen really is attractive, regardless of everything that’s happened, regardless of the new age difference between them. The light reflects on the gold of his hair, making his smile emanate with brightness.  
  
“I forgot the tape that had the wedding music on it,” Jensen explains leisurely, as the rest of the wedding party carries on, oblivious. “Here I was, worrying about the vows and the wedding favors. And I forgot the music, probably one of the most important parts. And when I sent my best man Chris home to pick it up, only he grabbed the wrong b-side cassette tape.  _Champagne Supernova_ ,” Jensen laughs, the sound sharp like a whip sounding all the way to the back of the chapel, “It was so stupid. And just watch, she’s going to laugh the whole way down the aisle.”  
  
Jared follows Jensen’s gaze. “Who’s going to--?”  
  
The doors to the beaten down chapel open, and Jared feels Jensen’s own intake of break in his chest, the throbbing pound of his heart that becomes more insistent with each step the girl down the aisle takes.  
  
Jared holds back a sharp intake of breath. It’s the woman from his nightmares. It’s the woman from the car accident. It’s the woman from Jensen’s real life.  
  
She’s pretty, even Jared can see what, with hair tied back in simple curls, the ivory hem of her dress brushing against the floor with a soft swish. When she hears the music, and her eyes find Jensen’s, she’s pretty. But when she laughs, a full-bellied peal ringing clear as church bell chimes, she’s the most beautiful person Jared has ever seen. Her face is flushed with excitement, eyes shining, and Jared’s finding it difficult to keep from abandoning his post and cantering down the aisle to sweep her up, kiss the apples of her smiling cheeks. Her laughter weaves with the music in what sounds almost akin to a harmony and he loves her, loves her so much he doesn’t even care how badly he’s most likely botched this entire ceremony.  
  
Jared knows offhand that these are Jensen’s emotions, Jensen’s own love and adoration showering through him. These are not Jared’s to feel but he does feel them, sharp in detail to the point of near pain, he’s feeling them so fervently.  
  
By the time she’s at the altar, the music is somehow louder, ringing in a way that it wouldn’t in a real church, in a real time. Jensen has to touch her, lifts a stray curl pooling over her shoulder, holds her gaze and matches her laughter.  
  
“I give you one job, Ackles, one, and this is what I get? Walking to the alter to  _Oasis_?”  
  
“Chris’ fault, not mine.”  
  
“Hey!” A guy with long hair a few feet behind Jared barks. “No trash talking the classics. I will cancel this wedding.”  
  
Everyone in the church laughs, the sensation fills Jared like a helium pump, light and happy, surrounded by people who love Jensen, who love the woman Jensen is about to marry. The girl laughs again, smiling radiantly, enough that Jensen inwardly sighs a soft  _Lisa_ , the name filled with such love it breaks Jared’s own heart.  
  
The memory freezes suddenly, as if Jensen had pressed pause, and within the blink of an eye, the chapel is empty, and it is just the two of them. Jared pretends not to notice when Jensen wipes his face on the sleeve of his tux.  
  
“You loved her.” Jared follows Jensen to sit on the pews. It’s a simple understanding, and in ways it’s good, good that Jensen did have someone. But god does it make the ache in Jared’s chest throb. He had thought Jensen was his, and vice versa. Now he sees that’s not the case. It never was.  _Champagne Supernova_  was never their song, not the way Jared had thought.  
  
“More than anything.” Jensen says hoarsely, staring at the altar at the front of the chapel. “We’d been married for a few years when I came up with the idea and procedure protocol for mind mapping, permission to start running trials. When I realized every mind mapper needed a Call, something to tie them down to their real life so they didn’t get lost in someone else’s, I didn’t even hesitate. She was all that was real in my life. Spunky and grounded and real. I loved her, and at the end, that’s what killed her.”  
  
Jared doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, but the memory changes all at once, the chapel falling away to the dream Jared has memorized by heart now.  
  
“I know this part,” Jared says, shaken. “I dreamed about it.”  
“Never was a nightmare,” says Jensen, “Though I wish to God it had been.”  
  
Lisa’s still just as beautiful, even the half life version of her, and Jensen’s still just as crippled with love.  
  
“I didn’t know then,” Jensen says, as Lisa appears again, her wedding dress tattered, her smile terrible, her voice in his head, “Mind mapping was still so new. I didn’t know what would happen when you mind map a patient you’re emotionally attached to. I didn’t know about fingerprints. I didn’t know about the threads that don’t just tie you to memories, but the people involved in them. If I had stayed-” He flicks his eyes towards Lisa, her sweet entreatments for him to do just that. “We both would have died.”  
  
“But at least in doing so, you learned. Knowing about emotional attachments and the dangers of them, it must have saved any potential doctors from making the same mistake, killing their patients.” Jared means it to be helpful, comforting, that there is a silver lining to the dark cloud.  
  
Jensen’s gaze slides across to him, cold and distant. “And did you learn anything important when you jumped off a roof with the intent of killing yourself?”  
  
Jared flinches, wishing he could take it back. “I didn’t, I—I’m sorry—“  
  
“It’s okay,” Jensen says quietly, and he rubs his bare wrists as hundreds of threads break and fall from them. “I just think that you of all people, Jared, would know that there is nothing to be learned from suffering. There is nothing poetic in the pain we go through just by simply trying to live our lives, and it’s not your job to derive meaning from the suffering just because you don’t know what else to do about it.”  
  
It steals the breath right from Jared’s lungs, the truth of that. There was nothing romantic about wanting to be dead. In feeling so lonely you’d grasp onto anyone’s helping hand if you thought it’d ease the ache. In losing someone you loved because you’d made the simple fucking mistake of loving them and not wanting to let them go.  
  
The whole nightmare is there in three dimensional presentation, just like each time before only this is the last, and Jensen is with him. They stand shoulder to shoulder and watch Lisa’s fading memories, the bleeding color, the taut threads, pulling tighter. The decision to cut her loose, the pigment all draining away. The screaming, cut off like the grating halt of a sputtering engine.  
  
Jensen doesn’t make a sound for the rest of the whole memory, takes every single second with a stony face, like he’s braving the storm because he deserves the storm.  
  
After it fades to grey, he turns around, face a mask of pain. “I still have all my memories of her. They’re all here,” he taps a finger to his skull, “But no matter how many times I turn them over, I feel nothing. I cut them off. The strings are still attached, but they are no longer connected to anything. I had kept the wedding as my Call, so I have at least that. Or, had that,” Jensen looks at Jared, “I cut that off not too long before I convinced you to wake up.”  
  
“You broke…your Call?” Jared asks, appalled, the impact of that hitting him like a freight train. “But why? Why would you do that? She was  _everything_  to you, she was your soul, she was—“  
  
“She’s dead, Jared,” Jensen says, walking towards the edge of Lisa’s barren maze. “She’s dead, but you were dying. I’d do it again, if the moment called for it. Wouldn’t even hesitate.”  
  
“But…but I wasn’t real.” Jared sputters stupidly, at a loss for any other words. It didn’t make sense. Why would Jensen care? Why  _should_  Jensen care?  
  
“You felt real to me.” Jensen answers. “The most real thing I’d known in years.”  
  
Jared blinks. For so long, he had thought he was the loneliest person on Earth, that nothing was comparable to the feeling of uselessness when nobody cares to want you. But now he sees the flipside of that coin: loneliness that comes from knowing happiness, true happiness, and having it taken away.  
  
How unfortunate that amidst isolation and loss, they’d found each other, and even now, they were walking parallel paths: two lives side by side that could never quite touch.  
  
He exits the memory of Lisa’s mind in silence, and Jared follows, quiet even as he slips his hand into Jensen’s, squeezes tight.  
  
\----  
  
“You’re different than I remember,” Jensen says slowly, over the snap crackle and pop of burning firewood.  
  
Jared had insisted, after several minutes trudging through the dark maze, that they go to a nighttime memory, because sunny wedding chapels and grey mindscapes have made his eyes grow tired, and his heart grow raw. So Jensen picked a family camping trip from his childhood, somewhere where sleeping bags lay unfurled on the ground, where the sky was littered with stars.  
  
Jared glances out of the corner of his eye. He’s still mulling over the last conversation they’d had that had not been about where to meander next. Jensen telling him he felt real, Jensen essentially saying he’d chosen saving Jared’s life over preserving the loving memory of Lisa’s. What did it all mean? Did Jensen pity him? Resent him? Did Jensen have some kind of fucked up projection that Jared was somehow  _like Lisa?_  Was there a possibly—an inkling, even—that Jensen could still find Jared real, still want Jared around?  
  
There are too many questions to ask and too many answers he’s not sure he’s ready for, so Jared simply says, “Oh, really, how so?”  
  
Jensen’s lips quirk. “You’re bossier. Way bossier.”  
  
Jared shrugs, feeling a bit lighter. “I don’t do well under stress.”  
  
“Also way bitchier when you’re annoyed,” Jensen replies, outright laughing when Jared chucks a piece of kindling at him. It’s a chilly autumn night, but the fire is hot enough to scorch, enough that Jared needs to lean back from time to time, tip his face towards the sky.  
  
“You’re also way happier, or, maybe not happy, but upbeat. Optimistic. Hopeful.”  
  
“That’s just the memory interference talking,” Jared assures, “I can assure you, when we get this whole thing sorted out, I’m gonna be a lot sadder. Tears everywhere. All the time. Brace yourself.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t respond, just ducks his head down and chuckles to himself. They might be strangers in some ways, but in others, Jared feels like he’s sharing a regular night with someone he’s known literally forever. Jensen says they’re different, that the fingerprints changed their perceptions of each other, but Jared doesn’t think that’s true. Not where it matters at least. Not in the moments where Jensen’s whip-crack laughter and Jensen’s smile fall on his senses like warm honey dissipating into hot tea, sweetening the whole pot.  
  
Sure, Jensen’s different in big ways, in the events of his life, in the levels of his pain, his loss. But in a way, it almost puts them on even ground. In a way, it makes them even more the same.  
  
“Do you remember McConnell’s ice cream?” Jared asks.  
  
“Should I?” Jensen raises an eyebrow.  
  
“We were at the playground with your babysitter, couldn’t have been more than six, and I found this crisp five dollar bill on the ground, and got this crazy idea to give her the slip and go across the street to McConnell’s to get ice cream.”  
  
“Jared, I’m lactose intolerant.”  
  
“I know,” Jared grins, “We split a banana sundae, and you got sick all over the ice cream parlor floor, the vinyl seats. I didn’t know what to do, I was five! I thought my lucky Lincoln had killed you. Even after you got an Epi-pen, I couldn’t stop crying. My mom let me stay at your house that night, just so I could be with you in case something happened.”  
  
Jared smiles, ruefully. “You held my hand the entire car ride to your house, didn’t let go until after we’d both fallen asleep watching Power Rangers on the sofa. You don’t remember that?”  
  
There’s no naming the expression on Jensen’s face right now, the cool composed of the mask of the doctor only barely concealing the emotion underneath. His eyes are bright, and there’s the premonition of a smile about the corner of his mouth, even as he shakes his head. “No, no I don’t.”  
  
That has to be it then. The reason Jensen didn’t remember the sex, didn’t remember so many other vivid details of their relationship that Jared knew so vividly. Jensen had probably only really been there in his head for a half of those invented memories. But Jared’s mind, so starved for affection, for someone to be there through the good and the bad, for someone to help him be  _okay_ , that it had gone ahead and colored in the lines Jensen had laid down. Jensen gave Jared an inch, and Jared’s lonely mind had taken a mile.  
  
It would almost be kind of cool, if it weren’t so goddamn sad.  
  
“I never told you I was lactose intolerant,” Jensen says softly, after a long pause. “The only people who really know about it are Gen, and Lisa before she-” He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t know that. It isn’t possible.”  
  
“When you think about it, it’s really not all that farfetched.” Jared shrugs. “It just means that despite all this happening in the most unreal way possible, there’s still some truth to it. Despite all odds, we still might come out of this thing knowing each other better than we thought possible.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t respond, and Jared turns his head away from the fire again, cooling his hot face on the night sky.  
  
\--  
  
If time passes, Jared most certainly isn’t aware of it. They could spend eons for all he knows, searching for an exit route, searching for shelter from the rain. He loses track of anything important that might be going on in the hospital, only aware of the places Jensen shows him, the growing sense of knowing in his chest, that this is exactly where he’s meant to be, despite not belonging in these memories in the first place.  
  
“Where are we now?”  
  
Jensen smiles. “Seattle aquarium. Class field trip for marine biology 101. I met Lisa over by the shark tank, where she was complaining about there being no birds.”  
  
The walls glow pale blue, and Jared watches large tropical fish swim by the glass, dorsal fins scintillating in the water.  
  
They talk themselves into circles. Jensen talks about the aftermath of Lisa’s death, how he cut off his friends, his colleagues, his relatively close acquaintances. He moved his experiments to the hospital here in Seattle, and from there on perfected the toxin and developed the teaching program, and the clinical trial.  
  
Jared talks about being the kid in elementary school with the dead baby sister, how he really didn’t have many friends in Ventura, and eventually that transferred over to really not having any parents, as mom and dad got divorced and spent their energies passing him back and forth, trading in shifts that required minimum to no care. He talks about growing up, realizing he was gay—conveniently leaving out the fact that the crux of that particular sexual awakening had resulted from a fake memory with Jensen in the back of his mind—and even manages to slip a couple crazy Ex stories, which earns him a couple good laughs from Jensen. Then Jensen tells the story of the time Lisa tried to cook him breakfast in bed and set the entire kitchen of their first apartment on fire, and Jared laughs so hard he cries.  
  
He could do this, just talking, basking in the glow of Jensen’s company, forever. He just has no clue if Jensen feels the same, after every truth they’ve uncovered and learned.  
  
“I didn’t know,” Jensen says the words softly, aquamarine ripples of light passing over his face, half in shadow. “I wouldn’t have continued the sessions if I’d known this was going to be result.”  
  
Jared knows this. Even though he’d spent more than enough time wrestling with his resentment and anger over it. He knows that Jensen, stupid, protective Jensen, would never have willingly hurt him. It’s both a comfort and a curse to hear.  
  
Instead of offering a condolence, because he’s sure Jensen knows it anyway, Jared swings his legs around on the bench to settle facing him, leaning forward on his palms, bringing them closer than they’d been since Jared had pinned him against the wall of the labyrinth some several eons ago.  
  
“Why me?” Jared asks, not wanting to push him, yet wishing he was daring enough to do only that. “You told me yourself. You’ve saved dozens, maybe hundreds, of coma patients. But I was the first one you got attached to, emotionally, I mean. You cared about me. I want to know why.”  
  
Jensen considers it for a moment, and for that moment, Jared wonders if he is going to lie. But he looks up, expression clear, and the honesty in expression makes Jared want to do crazy things. Kiss his nose, touch his freckles, press close and drag him in by the collar of his sweater and just—  
  
“When you see the sun,” Jensen says, interrupting Jared’s thoughts, “Do you look directly at it?”  
  
“The sun?” Jared really doesn’t have any clue what that had to do with anything, but he takes the bait. “Uh, no. That’s how you go blind.”  
  
“So you’ve never seen the sun, because you’ve never looked directly at it?”  
  
“No.” Jared’s mouth twists in focus. “You see it out of the corner of the eye. Even when you’re not directly paying attention to sun, it’s there, you know it without having to look.”  
  
He looks up to find Jensen nodding. “That’s why.”  
  
Jared frowns in confusion. “So what, you’re saying I’m a bright mind? Is that what all this apocalyptic disaster is about: my bright mind?”  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes, but when he continues it’s with a pink tinge to his cheeks, sending Jared’s adrenaline to full throttle. “You’re right, Jared. I’ve run through hundreds of minds. Hundreds. But none of them felt as intensely as you feel. Even after I left your mind, I carried those emotions with me. It felt…” Jensen pauses, then apparently decides it worth saying. “It felt like being able to breathe again.”  
  
Jared doesn’t know what to say to that, at the risk of completely jumping the gun on the connotation of Jensen’s words, the exact intent of the slow blush creeping underneath the freckles in his face.  
  
“You don’t think it makes me weak? I dunno, that I feel all that stuff, that I hurt, that I cry, that I wear my depressed heart on my sleeve in hopes that someone will take care of it?”  
  
“No,” Jensen disagrees, and he holds the eye contact all the way through his answer, not once pretending to be distracted by the environment around them, the fish drifting in their tanks. “I think it makes you brave.”  
  
And it is here that Jared decides he doesn’t care whether every memory of him and Jensen is real or not. It felt real to Jared then, it feels real to Jared now. They’re in aquarium that isn’t Jared’s to inhabit and nothing about this real and yet Jared sits, looking at Jensen and aching.  
  
After all this time, with the haze of a runaway mind removed, he still wants Jensen just as bad as he did before.  
  
  
\---  
By four AM, Chad and Gen are running out of ways to entertain themselves, and definitely run out of ways to avoid interacting.  
  
Running out of time to save Jensen, too. But they don’t talk about that.  
  
“He sets up the shot, me makes the shot—“ Chad flicks the foil wrapper of his burrito at the trashcan, flicking his wrists like he’s LeBron James. “SCORE. FUCKYEAH. THE LAKERS TAKE THE CHAMPIONSHIP!” Chad mimes the roar of the crowd, does a victory lap around the room.  
  
“Shut up, you idiot!” Gen hisses, biting back a smile. “Do you want to get caught?”  
  
“Quit fussing, Princess.” He grins, bodily throwing himself into the chair beside her, landing with a crash that rolls the chair across the room, bumping into the bed where Jensen lies.  
  
“Watch it,” Gen growls, the smile dropping off her face in a flash. Chad goes quiet for a moment, apologetic. They stare at the bed and the bathtub, the tension brought right back to the forefront.  
  
“Pass me some fucking coffee why don’t you.” He grouses, all the levity sucked out of the moment. “I’m dying over here.”  
  
\--  
  
At first Jared thinks he’s just imagining that the rain is picking up the pace, getting faster, finding them easier. He and Jensen spend so many timeless memories talking, asking and answering questions, sussing out the real and not real of who they are, who they’ve become, that it’s impossible to tell. But by the time the rain catches up to them for the third time in a row, destroying another one of Jensen’s favorite libraries to study in from his med school days, Jared starts to realize what’s really happening.  
  
The rain, the essential destruction that begin on that road with the black ice, is spreading like a virus throughout Jensen’s mind and it’s coming specifically for Jensen: the catalyst for the destruction in the first place. The fingerprints weakening the structure, covering up too much of Jensen’s individual, smearing and greasing the surface of a pristine and ordered mind. It’s falling apart, and all because of Jared. All because Jensen had wanted it just so.  
  
They’re in Jensen’s family vacation house in Rocky Point, Mexico when Jared finally decides to points out the possibility of the fission of Jensen’s memories being aimed specifically at Jensen. Around them, rain leaks down the walls, rotting the wood of the house, eating at the fabric of the memory.  
  
Jensen nods in agreement, looking troubled. “My mind is, from what I can tell, consuming itself. In choosing the fantasy over the reality, I willingly left my reality to crumble, with little to no emotional connection in stock of it.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“I chose to live in memories that weren’t real, and so my real memories are pretty much dead without me. My mind no longer knows what’s real and not real, so it’s essentially self-destructing, falling to insanity.”  
  
“And how long will you last like this?” Jared asks, breathless, grasping Jensen’s hand and shifting closer to him as the spring drizzle becomes acid downpour that eats at the very air they breathe. It doesn’t hurt when it touches Jared’s skin, but he doesn’t want to know what happens if they linger, so he follows Jensen forward, the two of them sprinting through the maze. The rain starts to fall around them, icy on Jared’s skin, just like it was in that first memory.  
  
Jensen looks troubled. “A few weeks, maybe a few days. It’s hard to say exactly how much time is passing down here. Truth be told, I’d rather not find out.” He pulls Jared from the beach house and through a college lecture hall, through a church where the parish sings, through an empty train station, and still the rain pours, unraveling the skies, distorting the colors.  
  
Jared could go for hours like this, Jensen guiding him through memory and thought, the two of them talking, but he can see Jensen wearing thin. As if each time the rain falls, a little bit of who Jensen is, of what makes Jensen strong, erodes away.  
  
It’s an exhaustion that he recognizes all too well, lived with every morning for years. The loss of so much he couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t feed himself, or others. The exhaustion of someone who wants to give up, who sees no other way out.  
  
Jared doesn’t realize Jensen has stopped until he’s rounded on him, breathing hard, the sky literally falling about them.  
  
“You need to go,” Jensen says over the roar of the rain. He releases Jared’s hand and takes a few steps back, closer to where the train station, the green hills beyond it, are eroding away.  
  
“I—what? No!” Jared protests, “I literally just found you! I’m not about to abandon you to lose your mind!”  
  
Jensen stops, a scant few inches from fading away into the background, letting the rain blur and erase him like a stray pencil mark. “You can leave, Jared, you can walk out of here and live your life and leave me to die. They’ll pull the plug, sure, but you? You can have a life, the life I sacrificed all this shit for in the first place.”  
  
“Yeah, and nobody asked you to do that—“  
  
“But I did,” Jensen says shortly, “Because I believe that life is something worth fighting for. So you’re going to walk out of here, and you’re going to fight for the life that you want. Because it’s signing your own death warrant if you stay any longer.”  
  
And still, after the hours and days and weeks they’ve spent just talking, still Jensen wants Jared to remain above him. Still, Jensen wants Jared to walk away, leaving him to sink beneath landslide that has become his mind; weighted by his own feelings, obsessions, and thoughts, each and every one of them having to do with Jared.  
  
Jared can run through Jensen’s mind, play this game of chicken as long as Jensen will allow, but at the end of all this Jensen has to know. Before this all crumbles away, Jensen has to know that Jared feels the same: feels trapped amidst landslides, ready to give in and sink into Jensen’s mind deeper so there’s no telling them apart.  
  
“You don’t get it, do you?” Jared says incredulously, shaking his head, “Of course you don’t, you stubborn idiot. I knew the death warrant I was signing way before this moment. I knew I could die the second they asked me to just jump straight into your mind!”  
  
“So then why stay? You could have anyone out there, in the real world. You could fall in love with someone real, someone with working legs, someone who isn’t as fucked up as me, that’s for sure.”  
  
“I don’t want that,” Jared says quietly, the simplicity of the phrase echoing in the space between them. between them.  
  
Jensen glares. “Well then what do you want, Jared, huh? Because it sure as hell looks to me that the only thing you’ve ever wanted has been a one way ticket to the grave with no return policies, and that’s nothing. What do you want, Jared? C’mon, spit it out!”  
  
“I want to run away from reality with you, you impossible prick,” Jared blurts, half dreading the words coming out of his mouth, half invigorated by the fire in his belly that put them there. “God, don’t you get it? I want to risk life and limb to save your stupid ass, because even though I know—Jesus Christ do I know—that you’re not real, that our entire relationship isn’t real, dammit, I want it. So yeah, I’m gonna take that one way ticket to the grave if it means I get to stick with you, because I have a no returns policy too.”  
  
Jared lunges forward and grabs Jensen’s wrist, jerks the sleeve of his sweater up, examines where the veins are tinged blue beneath the surface of the unmarked skin. He holds his own wrist up to it. Jensen doesn’t actually have the scar that Jared remembers cutting himself, because Jensen had never asked Jared to cut him in reality. But he knows Jensen remembers it too, so he holds their wrists together as if they match, gripping Jensen’s arm tight, staring at Jensen through the rain, almost soaking wet by now. “You once told me that if you jump, I jump. So this is me jumping, okay? This is how I choose to keep fighting. I’m gonna save your self-sacrificial ass first. And then I’ll pick up the rest of the pieces from there, because I don’t believe in living a life where you’re not the reality.”  
  
Jensen stares at him—lips parted, eyes bright—like he wants to hit Jared, but can’t quite find the energy to do so. So Jared pushes forward, lets his mouth ramble, lets his foolish heart show just a little bit more.  
  
“You chose to exit reality, so fuck, I guess I’m in for that too. This is me jumping, Jensen. This is me fighting for the life I want. Take it or leave it.”  
  
Jensen stares at him like he’s absolutely lost his mind, and Jared’s just about to start thinking he has when Jensen goes and surprises them both.  
  
“I love you,” he blurts, the words puncturing something vital in Jared’s chest and god, he’s got to be bleeding, bleeding out all over the floor. Jensen reaches for him, hands fisting in the front of his shirt and the rain is falling but Jared can barely feel it. “Christ, I thought after Lisa--after everything. I wouldn’t—I didn’t think I could, “ he breaks off, the words coming in a rush, too much and too little all at once. ”But your  _heart_ , Jared—“  
  
And really, there’s only so much Jared can stand to hear, for he is as weak as he is angry as he is happy as he is sad as he is stupidly, stupidly in love. He feels it all, every last drop, and there’s nowhere to go with that feeling, no way to crack open his chest and let it out of the cage. So he takes that leap, falls into kissing Jensen easy as breathing, rain falling about their heads, melting the memory away in a wash of watercolor and torn cellophane.  
  
It feels like flying, Jared notes offhandedly. Kissing Jensen produces that same rush of gravity and centrifugal force that makes his stomach drop, waiting for the impact of the ground to slam into him, only it never does. Jensen brings his hands up to stroke at the wings of Jared’s shoulder blades, pulling him closer as Jared wraps his arms around his neck, tangles his fingers in his hair. There’s flight in Jensen’s mouth, an upwards draft that lifts Jared, sends him high and soaring as his lips part on a sigh, tasting Jensen, trying so hard to remember the softness of his mouth, the exact pressure of each kiss.  
  
He can remember kissing Jensen prior to this moment, and maybe it’s the realization that those moments never really happened that makes it seem pale in comparison to this, but it does. Even Jared’s rose- tinted fantasies and day dreams were nothing, the black and white tableaux to the living color film, in which Jensen feels better than anything Jared’s ever known.  
  
The silly one night stand in a busted apartment eons away wasn’t the real Jensen.  _This_  is Jensen, mouth moving over Jared’s like he can get drunk off of the taste alone. Jensen, who kisses not as Jared remembers, and not as Jared hoped, but as Jared knows, has always known Jensen would kiss. It’s warm and erring on this side of possessive and Jared feels the intent bone deep, lets it consume him in sweeps of tongue, light tugs at his bottom lip with teeth.  
  
Jared has fought his whole life—both real and imagined—to have this moment, and when it finally happens, he’s useless to do anything but melt, sealing the space between their bodies and clinging to Jensen as if he is the only goddamn thing that matters.  
  
The creak and groan of the train station tells them the memory is truly about to crumble, so Jensen pulls back with a heart stopping smile, takes Jared’s hand and whispers, “Come on, run.”  
  
_How can this not be real_ , Jared wonders, letting Jensen tug him forward, aware of the slamming of his heart in his chest, the way their skin is warm where they touch. It seems silly to even question it, he just gives into it, follows Jensen’s lead and tosses ‘real’ right out the door. The facts are circumstantial—all Jared needs to know is how he feels, how this feels, Jensen’s hands clasped with his.  
  
The memory cascades around them in a riptide of feeling but Jensen pulls Jared deeper and they run, hands locked, into the maze, darting in between memories like twin thoughts along a synapse. They search for a safe haven, play hide and seek in emptied memories like they used to as kids in the empty bedrooms of Jared’s house. They run and they kiss, Jensen’s hands impossibly gentle on Jared, Jared’s heart impossibly young, elastic with how large it feels. They kiss in tall wheat fields and they kiss in locked medical supply closets and they kiss in Jensen’s kindergarten classroom, searching for somewhere where rain does not fall, where memory does not fade.  
  
“My bedroom,” Jensen breaks off, surprised, as they stumble into a pale yellow room awash in sunlight, “God, I haven’t lived here since I was a kid.”  
  
“Where did you grow up?” Jared asks, feeling like he’s walking on holy ground, a place where Jensen actually lived, actually laughed and cried and grew up. The floorboards are worn from use and there are crayons scattered all over the floor, but it is real. This is a place Jensen once inhabited for real, and Jared suddenly feels insignificant in the wake of it.  
  
“Texas, born and raised. I think this memory is from the summer I holed up in here for days, building model planes, studying their flight patterns.” True to his words, the ceiling is littered with model planes hanging from strings.  
  
“Why planes?” Jared whispers into Jensen’s neck, kissing just above his collarbone.  
  
“I liked flight. I liked flying. I ended up choosing medical school down the road, but for the longest time I wanted to be a pilot, to touch the sky, up there with the birds.”  
  
Jared wonders fleetingly if he and Jensen are thinking the same thing; of Jared’s rooftop, of hours spent on that rooftop taking photographs of the birds flying about before setting on the telephone wires. Even in their realities, they are same in ways they hadn’t accounted for. That brings a whole new charge to this moment, to this memory, and Jared is suddenly and painfully aware that what’s happening now may never happen again.  
  
Their eyes lock and Jared sees everything that he knows Jensen to be laid out in front of him, because they left all control and caution back at the train station.  
  
Maybe it’s because the room is warm, or the afternoon feels like something they can stretch out in, whatever reason Jared kisses Jensen, heat unfurling in his stomach. They don’t have time to discuss if this is right or wrong, they don’t have time to question the nature of something that feels too good to stop. They’re wasting time, surely, but Jared will gladly waste each second if he gets to be here, holding Jensen tight enough to bruise.  
  
Their bodies collide and Jared tumbles down onto the small box spring and he thinks there’s some humor in this, making out in the room that Jensen really did grow up in, doing this in a world where  _this_  is not possible. But Jared wants it, wants Jensen over him, around him, inside him, in any way Jensen is willing to offer.  
  
And here’s the thing. Jared may not know Jensen the way he thought he did, but this: the way Jensen responds to his touch, shivers under the lightest brush of fingertips against the warm skin of his belly, this is knowing. Jared knows just where to kiss, where to touch. Just as Jensen maneuvers around the scars on his wrists, kisses the moles on his cheeks, slots his fingers underneath Jared’s t-shirt to feel the groove of his hips. They know each other, even in a place where—by all logic and reasoning—they should complete and total strangers, meeting for the first time.  
  
But kissing Jensen is second nature, their lips moving and spilling out things that Jared already knew. Jared may not know Jensen, but he does love Jensen, and that sensation seems to fill in the blanks between them.  
  
It’s funny, he’s pinned underneath Jensen and being kissed like he hasn’t in years, and all Jared can think about—as Jensen strips him of his t-shirt, kisses down his stomach, nuzzles at the happy trail beneath his navel—is how he wants to forget everything for this: Jensen, the warmth of the room, the way their bodies fit.  
  
Maybe, if he gives enough of himself to Jensen, he can forget just how worthless he really is, so starved for companionship that he’ll chase after a dying man just so he doesn’t feel alone. He wants to be worthy of Jensen’s touch, deserving of the easy affection that Jensen so easily offers, rolled up in slow heated kisses, in fingers that trail down his frame.  
  
Jensen’s got him all stretched out, pliant and wanting, and Jared may have had sex before but he’s suddenly hyperaware of his body, of the lankiness of his own limbs, the scars along his wrists. His is more incorrectly assembled jigsaw puzzle than cohesive human, and it’s humiliating to think about. He cringes underneath Jensen’s stare.  
  
Fucking hell, if he isn’t the most pathetic excuse for a human in existence.  
  
“What is it?” Jensen hovers, solid, so goddamn beautiful it hurts to look at him. The lines of his body are taut with the exertion of supporting himself, and there’s a thin sheen of sweat on chest that makes the air between them crackle.  
  
And then there is Jared, who failed to protect his baby sister when it was the only thing he’d wanted to do. Jared, who’d disappointed his parents just by living, disappointed his brother just by loving, and disappointed even himself by failing to follow through on the suicide attempt.  
  
Jared, who can’t even keep it together long enough, who can’t stop being a goddamn mess long enough to fuck Jensen without bringing  _feelings_  into it.  
  
They’ve got one shot to do this, to enjoy it, and here Jared is, falling apart at the seams.  
  
“I’m nothing,” he says miserably, apologizing with and for his body, awash in an embarrassment over something’s he’s only ever wanted to hurt. It’s now his turn to be one with too much to say, and he stumbles over it. “I want this to be good. I want. God, I want you so bad but you--you are so much more. And I—“He cuts off, because he’s only making it worse.  
  
Jensen looks at him for a long moment, but instead of moving away he moves closer, lays his body over Jared’s, their chests bracketing, their hips brushing. Jensen still holds most of his weight up, but his heat scorches into Jared as he leans forward, drags his lips along the underside of Jared’s jaw, not kissing so much as he is mouthing at it.  
  
“Do you have any idea,” he breathes, “just how much I want you?”  
  
He thinks Jensen is going to kiss him again, into compliance or at least to distraction, but upon Jared’s lack of response Jensen only closes his eyes, face creased in silent concentration. Jared’s just about to ask what exactly was happening in this moment when he feels it, the sensation all but cracking both of their own chests open.  
  
Jared’s mouth falls open. Every neuron in his brain and every nerve ending in his skin has been lit on fire, and suddenly he feels Jensen’s hands on his skin as if they were his own, the shape of his own mouth, the shade of his eyes, as if he’s staring down at himself. Jensen’s strongest emotions are suddenly his own: the adoration for his every pore, for every smile and every tear. He knows the bubbly excitement over something this new and reckless, he knows the tight anguish that they only have so much time, just one simple summer afternoon. The raw intimacy sings in every cell in Jared’s frame, and he all but curls away from the intensity of it. There’s no measurement unit for this, for it makes up the very life force in Jensen, the will that keeps his heart beating, his eyes bright. These are not feelings he is sharing with Jared as much as they are facts—laid bare—the answer to his own question:  
  
“That’s how much.” Jensen whispers, and Jared crests like a wave underneath him to kiss the words out of his mouth because Jensen doesn’t have to _say_  anything. Yet Jensen presses on, presses the words into lips and tongue that he lays into the foundation of Jared, building something from the ruins of his battered self-esteem. “That’s how much I want you, do you understand? Jared,” he sighs the name, and Jared wants to drink the sound right out of his mouth, feel it buzz in his throat like champagne. Jensen pulls back, pupils blown, spine bowing as he leans over Jared, holds him at bay from another kiss.  
  
“You are everything.”  
  
There it is. Jared, in all his multitudes and singularities, in sun baked smiles and heartbroken tears, blood and bruises. Jared, despite all he’s been through, the he’s survived; it’s a part of who he is, but it’s not  _all_  he is.  
  
Jensen had said back there that it was Jared’s heart that made him feel, but Jared knows without a doubt that it is Jensen’s heart that keeps him going, Called him out in the first place. Jensen’s fierce protective streak, Jensen’s sarcasm, Jensen’s escapism and Jensen’s silent understanding of everything Jared is, both good and bad.  
  
He doesn’t see the Jared that waltzed right off a building. He sees the Jared that loved his baby sister, that takes photographs as often as he breathes, that goes to the rooftop to be closer to the birds in the sky.  
  
“God, I love you,” Jared breathes, and Jensen’s responding grin is a bit cocky and Jared will be sure to knock him down a few pegs later for his trouble, but he’s momentarily all too busy kissing Jensen like he was made to do it. They kiss until they are quite literally dizzy with it, the coiled emotions suddenly taken over by a headier feeling, one that lays thick on their skin, making everything hazy.  
  
Hormones, Jared thinks absentmindedly, like they’re both horny fumbling teenagers. It’s silly that they’re like this, and yet Jensen pulling away and kissing down his stomach once more, unbuttoning and sliding Jared out of jeans, sucking marks onto Jared’s hips, is the sexiest thing Jared can recall ever seeing. So he surrenders to it, gives as good as he gets, rolls his hips up to meet Jensen’s mouth, gasps with open eyes at the ceiling, hands scrambling to take hold in Jensen’s hair as his mouth ghosts over the outline of the tent in Jared’s boxers.  
  
If they’re going to do this, goddammit Jared wants to enjoy the hell out of it. Even though it’s only the first time, even though it’s likely the last time.  
  
He hisses through his teeth, loving Jensen’s teasing as much as he’s hating it, let’s out a soft gasp and an exhaled ‘fuck’ as Jensen shimmies his boxers down and laps experimentally at the tip of Jared’s cock, gathering the pearl of pre-come onto his tongue.  
  
It’s good, it’s incredibly good, until Jared becomes entirely too turned on to hold off the orgasm threatening to break over him, so he shoves Jensen’s face back, kissing the taste of himself off his lips and muttering, “Lube, we need lube.”  
  
“Ever heard the expression patience is a virtue?” Jensen smirks.  
  
“Ever heard the expression shut the fuck up?” Jared snaps back, swinging himself over the side of the bed and lunging for the side table drawer with a Power Rangers alarm clock and more model airplanes. He comes up empty handed, of course, because what kind of ten year old carries lube in the side table drawer of their childhood bedroom, he feels Jensen’s laughter telegraph through him in a rumble.  
  
“I don’t know what you think is so funny,” Jared tuts, “You’re not getting anywhere near fucking me if we don’t have lube.”  
  
Jensen stills. “You….you want me to fuck  _you_?”  
  
Jared stops, suddenly feeling small. “I mean, I suppose we never discussed the logistics, but yeah, if that’s okay with you.”  
  
In the blink of an eye, Jensen’s closed his eyes and with a  _pop_ , a small bottle of lube appears in his hand. Jared’s barely got enough wits about him to ask how the fuck Jensen just pulled that stunt, but he figures that since they’re in Jensen’s mind, creative license is probably a thing that’s exercised pretty liberally. It’s so ridiculous that Jared cracks up, completely unable to take the moment seriously.  
  
“Well, that’s one perk of having sex inside your head, no shortage of lube, and no condoms required,” Jared quips and Jensen hides his laughter behind a put upon huff, stripping himself of his own pants and crawling over to where Jared lays naked, turned on as hell.  
  
There’s levity here in this space, solace found in the ability to debate who’s going to bottom and go on a scavenger hunt for lube. And if Jared squints his eyes and tilts his head just right, he can pretend that this casual banter, this bickering, is something they do every time in the midst of foreplay. He can pretend that after they’re done with all this, they’ll go out and get coffee, or maybe order takeout, or maybe just watch the sun go down knowing there will be another tomorrow to do this all over again.  
  
Even as Jensen slides one finger into him, then two, crooking them inside and rubbing just so at Jared’s prostate, sending him cursing up a blue streak, Jensen’s got a slightly stupid expression on his face, the kind of face Jared is sure he’s got too. Like they are young and they have all the damn time in the world. Like there isn’t a whole life’s worth of demons waiting for them outside the walls of this sun soaked bedroom, with airplanes suspended from the ceiling.  
  
And when Jensen pushes into him,  _god_  when Jensen pushes into him, Jared’s senses stutter out and reboot into overdrive, everything centered on the taste of Jensen in his mouth, the smell of their mingling sweat, the sight of Jensen’s wet mouth lingering above his own, the pressure of Jensen’s cock pushing into him.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Jared swears, eyes rolling up into his head at the sparks stuttering up and down his spine, the sensation of too-much-too-good rolling over his skin like Catherine wheels, “Jesus fucking Christ. Oh fuck, Jensen—“  
  
“I know,” Jensen gasps, his voice hitting a gravelly octave that appears to be directly wired to Jared’s painfully hard cock. He waits till he’s all the way inside Jared, bottomed out and trembling, before he opens his eyes. Pupils blown, cheeks red, mouth redder, and god, it’s too good to look at. “I know.”  
  
Then he moves, cock dragging inside Jared’s ass, and Jared knows that he could never conjure up a fantasy that feels this good. Even if it isn’t real, there is some truth in it.  
  
Jensen goes slow, painstakingly and infuriatingly slow, which only further cements Jared’s secret theory that Jensen is definitely the sappier one between the two of them, all soulful staring and intimate gestures. He fucks in and out of Jared in a leisurely pace, like a metronome: all control, matching Jared measure for measure. Which is all well and good, but right now, reality is literally crashing down around them and right now, Jared wants to  _fuck_ , wants to have the randy kind of sex that he knows they don’t have the time to truly enjoy.  
  
If they’re going to die, if they’re going to say goodbye to this whole thing, Jared wants to be sure that they didn’t spend their one time having sex sharing only sappy confessions and wistful staring. Jared may be pathetic, but even he knows where to draw the line.  
  
He clenches his body once, twice, three times and rolls his hips with it, rewarded by Jensen’s eyes flying open in the midst of it and completely ruining his calm tantric-sex breathing as he lets out a shocked moan. He tries to cover it up with a well-aimed glare, but the pretty blush across his cheeks is far too telling, and Jared knows he’s taken him by surprise. He grins, all innocence.  
  
“You should know,” Jensen says slowly, with a deliberate snap of his hips that sends Jared jolting against the tiny headboard, wiping that grin straight off his face, “That my job is centered on knowing how to control my life. So if you think you’re going to win the stamina game, you better be prepared to lose.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” Jared says, needling him, loving that they can continue to pretend, “Because I thought you were supposed to be _fucking_  me.”  
  
Something clouds over Jensen’s eyes, and Jared knows he’s hit the metaphorical bingo when Jensen pins him into the mattress, holding his wrists above his head and marking up Jared’s neck, surely leaving bruises. His hips roll and snap again, the speed of his thrusts kicking in to something more erratic, and Jared moans, arousal spiking in the pit of his belly.  
  
Jared wants Jensen to mark him up, make him bruise, fuck him hard so he can feel it for hours, maybe days after. He doesn’t want this to be the only time they have this, but if it is, Jared wants it to linger, wants the remnants of what they’ve done—what they’re doing—to leave traces. Like wounds, like the smell after a fresh storm.  
  
Like fingerprints.  
  
He urges Jensen on as much as he can, bites at Jensen’s mouth, tongues at the sensitive spot above his clavicle, grabs at his ass and pulls him inwards with each thrust, adding to the momentum, to the heat. Jared’s sex drive was never too impressive up until this point. He was either too tired to be enthused or too sad to enjoy it at all. It didn’t matter how good the sex was, it left an odd feeling of emptiness in his stomach afterwards, like he’d only had a morsel when what he needed was a full three course meal.  
  
This is different, Jared thinks, even as he sweats all over the sheets and gasps around garbled phrases and pleads for more, yes, harder, now. This is sex, as it was supposed to be. Jared could do this all day. He laughs at the notion; he wishes he had all day.  
  
He can feel Jensen’s pace falling out of sync with his own as they kiss between gasps and moans, sweat gathering on their bellies with Jared’s pre-come. This won’t last forever, he can see Jensen’s face screwing up in concentration, eyes closed as if looking at Jared will be enough to send him barreling over the edge into oblivion.  
  
It kicks in then, the bittersweet sense of ‘this is it’, and Jared hates himself for feeling this sentimental, for fucking it all up. Jensen had said once that Jared’s whole problem was that gave too much of himself.  
  
Maybe that was true. Jared supposes it depends on how you look at it.  
  
He’s got nothing left to give that Jensen doesn’t already have, that much is true, because if Jared’s done anything in his goddamn life it’s prove how moronically over the moon he is for Jensen Ackles. Jensen knows, and yet...  
  
Yet this is it. If there was ever a time to be closer to Jensen, keep him for just a little longer, it’s now.  
  
And so with that thought, body singing with pleasure, feeling Jensen’s cock pummel into his prostate with startling accuracy, Jared can’t help but let his hands wander, gripping at Jensen’s biceps, traveling up to grab fast and hold in his hair.  
  
“Jen,” he says, “Look at me.”  
  
Jensen’s eyes fly open, the irises bright green and adoring. Jared doesn’t know if that whole mind connection flows both ways, seeing as they’re in Jensen’s mind, but he gives it his best bet, thinks of all the things he loves about Jensen, all the shades and multitudes, lines them up neatly and lists them off one by one. He thinks of being ten years old and biking over beaches and screaming for all he’s worth, he thinks of every moment Jensen was ever there for, the cuts he bandaged, all the times he stayed. Jared thinks, how much do I want you, and folds a thousand thoughts and memories into the smallest letter possible, lays it all out to give to Jensen.  
  
The thread of connection must have worked, for Jared’s entire vision whites out in a sudden violent roar. His orgasm crashes over him so unexpectedly he panics for a brief moment and wonders if the memory has begun to unravel about them, but the pleasure soon wipes the thought from his mind. His body twists, hips pumping of their own accord, pulling Jensen inside of him as far as he will go. Jensen’s mouth slams down on his hard enough that Jared’s mouth will surely bruise with the force, and he hears the wet gasp of Jensen coming apart above him, holding fast to Jared’s body as the two of them ride through it.  
  
It rather feels that the entire world rushes at him in one fell swoop, especially everything that’s led Jared up to this point; Megan’s death, his parent’s divorce, a lifetime of taking empty photographs, a small step off a tall building, all leading him straight to Jensen. It punches the breath from his lungs, and he doesn’t mean to cry out but he does, and Jensen’s there to swallow it down in a kiss, bodies quaking and rolling together.  
  
“That’s how much.” Jared breathes into Jensen’s mouth, robbed of the ability to speak anything else. “That’s how much.”


	10. Chapter 10

 

It’s amazing how slow time seems to pass when your boss’s life is on the line and you’re stuck with your least favorite person waiting to see if he lives. Gen feels like a damn housewife, with nothing to do but wait for someone to come home. She threw that poor kid into Jensen’s mind and he’s most likely going to  _die_  or at least be driven insane and all Gen will be able to fess up to doing is sitting around and twiddling her thumbs while it happened.  
  
“Thank god for twenty four hour espresso machines in the staff lounge,” Chad sighs, pushing a lukewarm Styrofoam cup into Gen’s hands.  
  
Truth be told, she’s never really spent much time  _alone_  with Chad. At least, not time that was idle, making her hyperaware of her every mood because she feels like he’s evaluating her.  
  
“They’ve been in there a while.” Chad says for what feels like the millionth time.  
  
She grunts in agreement, the only response she’s been able to conjure up.  
  
“So,” He says after a moment, “Have you always been in love with Jenny….or?”  
  
She’s too surprised to see him making actual conversation rather than just teasing her at--what is it, two am?--to be properly insulted before he’s sitting right across from her in the other spinning chair, their knees bumping.  
  
“I’m not in love with Jensen,” She says icily, resisting to temptation to bash the ceramic mug right over his stupid blonde head.  
  
“I’m not judging, just thought since, you know, we’re likely to lose our jobs and our fellowships come tomorrow morning, we better get to know each other a bit.”  
  
Gen personally can’t think of anything she’d like to do  _less_ , but Chad’s apparently already moving ahead. “It took me a while to figure out, neither you or Doc really mentioned living together, but I figured out that you guys drive in the same car together, and you watch his every move like a  _hawk_ —which isn’t even romantic if you ask me, it’s just plain weird, so I was just curious, did you get into this program because you screwed him? Or are you screwing him because you got into this program?”  
  
He may as well have slapped her, and she’d be screaming if they weren’t in the middle of a closed ward right now. She wants to kill him, she actually wants to kill him.  
  
She’s halfway to considering how to best get the job done when she notices an odd squint in Chad’s eyes, like he’s on the cusp of laughter and oh my god is he—  
  
“You’re joking,” She says stupidly, the anger deflating from her lungs in a rush. “You were making a joke.”  
  
Chad  _does_  smile this time. Oddly enough it still has the same desired effect of making her want to break a hard object over his head, especially when he laughs, shaking his head before glancing up at her. “I knew you had a funny bone in you. Yeah, I was joking. You may be a stuck up princess, and I may be a dick, but I’m not so much of a dick that I can’t recognize a brilliant, hardworking doctor when I see one.”  
  
“You’ve sure got a funny way of showing it,” Gen responds.  
  
Chad shrugs. “Not everyone picks up on the subtlety of my compliments. Maybe that’s because most of them come wrapped in insults, but beggars can’t be choosers.”  
  
Laughter bursts past Gen’s lips before she can even think to stifle it and good  _god_  is she losing her mind? This is an unlikely alliance in the midst of a crisis. She wasn’t supposed to find the numbskull motherfucker  _funny_.  
  
It gets worse, as Chad looks positively delighted at the sound.  
  
They sip their coffee in silence, and Gen considers the oddity of pairing her and Chad together in this internship program. Objectively they were two totally different kinds of doctors. Gen seemed the perfect candidate in her own eyes, controlled and disciplined, and distanced, most of all. She never got a wrong answer, nor bullshitted her way through a problem. And then there was Chad, who functioned as well as a busted firecracker, comprised of overreactions and under calculations, someone who always managed to get stuff right, to his own surprise as much as everybody else’s.  
  
Gen can’t see the justification why Jensen had picked her for the program if he had also picked Chad. They seemed the opposite ends of the spectrum for what a Mind Mapper needed to be, chock full of gut instinct, but in control of their every choice and emotion. She doesn’t get it. She’s not sure she ever will.  
  
“Despite how it may appear,” she says softly, “I’m not in love with him.”  
  
“Look, Cortese I was just--”  
  
“I owe Dr. Ackles my life. I have an emotional attachment because he saved my life, and I spend every single day of my life trying to return the favor.”  
  
“You know, you don’t have to give me some sob story justification, okay? He saved my life too, just so you know.”  
  
“Somehow I doubt it’s anything similar to me.”  
  
Chad considers this, then shrugs. “Maybe not. But it’s valid enough that I couldn’t go diving into his head. Valid enough that I’d pull any other kind of kamikaze shit to make sure he makes it out of this alive.”  
  
“So what’s the story, morning glory?” She asks, sardonic.  
  
Chad rolls his eyes, “Look, your highness, I ain’t got no tragic back story to shed on you. I’m just a kid who was more trouble to his parents than they could afford, so I spent a lifetime in boarding school and summer camp and being as far away from mummy and daddy as possible.”  
  
Gen glances over at him doubtfully, only to find Chad till, staring at the mug in his hands, looking legitimately tired for the first time since she met him six months ago.  
  
“It was freshman pledge week. I was dared to get plastered off my ass and attend a seminar event like so. Jensen was leading the seminar. I puked in the middle of his speech and spent the rest of the seminar huddled over the stage right trashcan, and then afterwards Jensen came over to me, and offered me his hand, and told me that I could make something of myself if I tried. He told me about the program, his program, and you know what Cortese? I made straight fucking A’s that year, straight fucking A’s until I graduated and got into the best medical program for the country and applied for this fucking internship. I made something of myself, because Jensen said I could. I’ve been a fuckup my whole life, Cortese. My whole, fuckin’, life. And suddenly here was this big shot telling me I was worth something, if I just tried harder. I’d never once heard that in my life.”  
  
Gen wasn’t aware that Chad was a charity case, different from her, but not all too much. Were all interns meant to be charity cases? Orphans that the benevolent Dr. Ackles took right off the street? She doesn’t know how that thought sits with her, wonders exactly how Jensen had planned to structure this program: with the world’s most brilliant minds, with the world’s most pathetic strays, the ones no one would care about if they went insane, went missing, turned into a serial killer and attempted to go on a killing spree before—  
  
No. Enough of that right now. Gen steels her mind to the concerns at hand. Priorities.  
  
“So what’s your story?” Chad continues, like he hadn’t just purged some extremely personal information to her. She casts a sideways glance at him, and then takes a gamble. Because it’s late, because she’s worried, because she’s tired of locking this up inside.  
  
“You remember Patient X?”  
  
“The serial killer that Jensen’s interns mind mapped and copy catted?” Chad kicks his legs up on the table. “It’s only every pre-med student’s favorite horror story.”  
  
Story, for some. Reality, for others.  
  
“Do you remember who the victim pool was? The people Misha Collins was kidnapping to torture?”  
  
“Duh, doesn’t everyone? The serial killer liked young women, the kind of girls that wouldn’t be missed too much when they vanished. Usually fifteen, sixteen years old, no close relatives. Creepy shit. So Collins went for almost the exact same—“ He stops, eyes is widening, “No fucking way, Cortese. No _fucking_  way—“  
  
“Yes way.” Gen says softly, and settles in for the long haul version of the story.  
  
She remembers, though she tries to forget. Misha Collins had been the prodigy of Jensen’s program, the crown jewel of the first class of interns, five instead of two. A brilliant Mind Mapper, from what she was told, who was from the get go enthralled with psychology and the incredible Dr. Ackles.  
  
But then Patient X happened, fingerprinted his mind, and everything fucking changed.  
  
Gen had been a nobody to Jensen then, someone’s bastard child living in shelters on the weekends and streets when the shelters were full. She didn’t want to be a part of the system, because foster parents were bullshit and she couldn’t see her siblings anyway, didn’t know where they’d been placed, just knew that she wasn’t qualified to take care of them, and that was all she needed to get the fuck out of the system.  
  
She wasn’t allowed her siblings, she wasn’t allowed a family. So all she wanted was freedom to read and learn and keep to herself. As luck would have it, she apparently wasn’t allowed that, either.  
  
She met Misha in the library, one of the hideouts she frequented when the rain came down heavy, and all she needed was some place warm. She knew the streets of Seattle like the back of her hand, and had lingered and slept in alleyways and stoops near the hospital enough that she’d seen him before. She knew he was a doctor from the scrubs, she knew he had friends, wasn’t the kind of person to be wary of. He shared his lunch with her one time in the library, and they’d struck up a conversation about mythology, had a whole damn argument about who the hero of the labyrinth really was: Theseus or Ariadne. They had a rapport, and Seattle was always so damn rainy or cold. So when he offered her a ride home one late night after closing time, she thought of the half toasted bagel he’d given her earlier with a smile, and accepted.  
  
She thinks that’s where it really went all wrong. Trusting that humanity wouldn’t disappoint her again. In the end, it always did.  
  
She doesn’t remember the when and the how, and thank god for that. Misha had kidnapped her and drugged her, strapped her to a table and mapped her mind all on his own. Like his serial killer instructor, Misha wanted to be close to his victims, and so for Gen that meant a rape of her mind, upending the contents and scrambling the insides, tossed salad in the form of sanity. She doesn’t remember much, because Jensen cleaned up what he could, but sometimes when she closes her eyes she can sometimes hear his voice echoing about the cavern of her mind. Whispering her name as he prowls through her thoughts, saying he was doing this for his love. For her.  
  
“Mind Mapping saves lives,” Gen says, ignoring the way Chad is staring at her, with pity, with something akin to fear. “But if you get in too deep, it destroys them just as easily.”  
  
She explains in a calm measured tone all the facts she knew from reports rather than what she remembers: How he kept her under a coma for two weeks, and by the time the authorities stormed the premises after Dr. Ackles got suspicious and had Collins tracked down and arrested, Gen’s mind stayed in a self induced coma for her own sake. Reality was not safe, not with him out there. But Dr. Ackles had gone in, cleaned up what damage he could, and when she woke up, he’d offered her a place to stay, an education, a support system.  
  
Gen had just been sixteen at the time. And apart from him there would have been no one else to miss her in case another psycho killer decided to kidnap and invade her mind.  
  
“I don’t remember any of the mind mapping, just as I wasn’t supposed to. But I didn’t come out of it the same person. And, I think, neither did he.” She doesn’t mention the details of that aftermath to Chad, the way she’d hated Jensen as much as worshipped him, her knight in shining armor. The way he’d offered her a place to stay, and she’d taken it upon the promise that she’d keep an eye on his program. She doesn’t mention that a relationship derived from guilt and debt turned into one that gave her solace, that Jensen was the only reason she sometimes had hope that the entire human race wasn’t completely fucked over with apathy and greed. She’d hated him at first, even now wonders if she still does. But she knows he cares, sees it sometimes, in the way he regards her, appraising, careful, but most of all proud.  
  
It was a very strange relationship with Dr. Jensen Ackles. Sometimes love, sometimes hate. Today was a hate day, simply because Jensen’s absolute fuckups were about to drive her up the motherfucking wall.  
  
“So yeah,” she finishes bitterly, her fingers cold where they knot in her lap, “You’re not the only one with some personal investment in his case.”  
  
And really, how is anyone supposed to respond to a story like that? Little Orphan Gen with her scrambled brains and her personal poltergeist. But it’s her reality, and she’s think she’s learned to cope better than most.  
  
“Jesus fuck-me Christ.” Chad swears. “We really are the pair, aren’t we Cortese?”  
  
“It’s Genevieve.” She responds quietly, staring at her coffee mug, “If we’re going to go down in the annals of this hospital as the worst interns in history for killing our boss, we may as well be on a first name basis.”  
  
He doesn’t laugh at that particular joke, but he does nod. “Alright, Gen,” he says, casually slipping into the nickname without so much as a hesitation, as if he’d been waiting for the go ahead from her specifically. “Sounds good to me.”  
  
The monitors remain steady in their beeps and tones.  
  
\--  
  
“Do you think we’re soul mates?” Jared whispers.  
  
In the lazy afternoon sunlight, with dust motes floating around them in a bedroom that smells like sex and sunshine, warm and blanketing their skin, Jensen rolls over onto his side to look at Jared. The flush is settled high on his cheekbones, gathering in perspiration just above his brow that Jared thumbs at, tactile despite himself. It’s incessant, that need to reach out, make sure he’s real after Jared was so scared he might not be. As soon as Jensen had pulled out and rolled over, Jared wanted to plaster himself right back to Jensen’s side, fit their bodies back where it only felt natural to come together. But he’d resisted, allowed Jensen to catch his breath without Jared clinging to him.  
  
“Are you asking me because you genuinely want my opinion, or you’re trying to be romantic?” Jensen asks absentmindedly, lips quirking, the two of them facing off like parentheses.  
  
“Don’t laugh,” Jared chides, aware of how foolish it sounds, “Just answer the question.”  
  
Jensen sucks in a breath, thoughtful. “I think even if that were real, there are way more complicated explanations for us--for this whole mess--than just ‘soul mates’.”  
  
“Kismet, maybe?” Jared’s hand moves back to Jensen’s brow, to the side of his face, and then to curl in the short hairs at the nape of his neck, scratching slightly, soothed by the sensation of hair and skin beneath his fingertips. “C’mon, give me your best guess.”  
  
“Perhaps.” Jensen’s mouth twists ruefully, eyes closing as he pushes up into Jared’s hand. When his eyes open again, his sadness is obvious.  
  
“But if I’m being honest, Jared, as far as I can tell we’re just two strangers who have never met, who may never meet. And assuming we make it out of my self-destructing mind alive, we’ll still be two people who don’t know each other, despite our best efforts. Even if we do wake up and meet, we’ll know that our entire mutual attraction is based on something that only happened in our heads. I’m not sure you can call that kismet. Sounds more like ill fate to me.”  
  
Jared stares at Jensen, feeling vulnerable—feeling brave. “I woke up because of you. I chose to  _live_  because of you. I don’t believe there’s anything ill-fated about that.”  
  
Now it is Jensen that reaches out, tips Jared’s chin up and guides him forward into a kiss that he feels all the way down to his toes. A kiss that feels  _real_. “Nothing ill-fated at all,” Jensen whispers into the corner of his mouth.  
  
Maybe it’s not kismet, but it is  _something_. This is more than sex, Jared knows. Jared has had sex with strangers and this isn’t that. Hookups with attractive guys were never revelatory; never made him feel like some kind of gaping wound in his chest was knitting itself back together.  
  
There is a way he and Jensen move about each other, twin suns relying on the pull of each other’s gravity to stay upright. The sex had been great, but Jared’s more staggered by the weight of Jensen’s hands at the dimples on his back, stroking absentmindedly. How he may not always agree with Jensen’s bull headed opinions and sometimes snappy comments but he understands them, anticipates them before they’ve begun to come out of his mouth. They may not be soul mates, but…they are something. They are two people who essentially have never slept together, never really met, but somehow Jensen knows without asking exactly what Jared likes, needs, before Jared himself even realizes he likes or needs it. They are two people who never would have come together if their lives hadn’t been filled with a myriad of hardships and disasters. Surely all that pain had to have been worth something? Surely this is the saving grace Jared gets for suffering alone for so many years?  
  
Jensen rolls onto his back, tucking one hand behind his head and staring up at the ceiling and Jared watches him, wondering if—when all this over, when Jensen is saved and Jared is moving on with his life—if Jared will be able to remember every detail. He doesn’t want to let the memory of Jensen fade with time- the outline of his profile, the sandpaper of his stubble. It’s happened to other people that Jared’s left behind while moving forward. He can’t remember how small his baby sister’s hands were when he’d play patty cake with her, nor the sound of his mother’s voice when she used to sing him to sleep. He hasn’t seen his parents in years, and sometimes their faces blur in his mind. He doesn’t want to lose Jensen that way, have days and weeks and months smudge the lines of his face, pale the exact shade of his eyes.  
  
He has a wild thought that they could stay like this forever, locked in the safety of memory and thought. They could run, flit between these spaces and never get caught. They can run from fate and they can fuck in spare bedrooms of houses Jensen once lived in, kiss in classrooms and stoops, leave shattered messes of memories in their wake, pieces upon pieces of Jensen. They would never wake up in the hospital, never be strangers ever again, and all that ill fate would be pushed back as far as it could go. It would be suicidal, but Jared isn’t sure he wants to wake up in a world where this—Jensen next to him, body warm and solid and Jared’s—isn’t what he gets at the end of each day.  
  
But never waking would mean that hundreds of other coma patients would never wake either. It would mean that Genevieve with her tiny frame and her angry mouth, Chad with his jokes and his solid demeanor, they’d have no one to make sure they didn’t get into more trouble.  
  
It’d be selfish to ask Jensen to even consider it, because Jared knows without a doubt that he  _would_. Jensen had severed his emotional ties to his life in a heartbeat, all because Jared had asked him to stay. He wasn’t going to do that again to Jensen, to everyone that loved and needed Jensen. Not anymore.  
  
For there is more to Jensen than Jared, it’s that simple. It doesn’t matter if Jensen’s the only person Jared’s ever cared about, the only reason he can think of worth living for, he won’t be selfish. He’ll get Jensen back to that world, back to the life that he deserves, where he’s saddled with a job that saves lives, instead of the depressed loser that Jared is. He’ll give Jensen whatever he needs to help him live, even if that means he never sees him again.  
  
Because Jensen’s right, really. There’s no stock in a relationship that’s completely inside your own head.  
  
“Have you ever heard about the parallel universe theory?” Jensen asks in a low voice, breaking the silence.  
  
Jared shakes his head as longing expands in his gut.  
  
“I took a class in quantum physics my first year of college. Most of the stuff I wasn’t that into, I was pre-med, I wanted to practice medicine,” Jensen says, the post coital draw of his voice near hypnotic in its growl, “But one of the things we learned stuck with me: the possibility of all these different universes living side by side, wherein you’re still the same person who meets the same people. But the circumstances are always different, and therefore your life is always different. These worlds influence each other constantly, and in these worlds, all the multitudes of possibilities come to fruition, and play out.”  
  
Jared props himself up on one elbow, “So what are you saying, in another world, we  _are_  soul mates?”  
  
The sheets rustle when Jensen turns his head, eyes soft, “I’m saying that in another universe, we do grow up together. We move to Seattle and we have sex on your crappy box spring and you’ve got hundreds of photographs and I’m in least half of them. And…in another, we meet at a party through a mutual friend, and you wear a hideous pink button-down but I think it’s cute so I talk to you. And in another, I’ve got legs that can keep up with you, and we run through sunshine and rain and woods. And, aw hell, maybe in another I never lose Lisa, but you and I are still best friends until the day we die.“  
  
“Oh,” Jared says, winded by the thought of it. It seems like an impossibly ridiculous concept but if he thinks about it,  _really_  thinks about it, he can picture it all: worlds and worlds of possible outcomes, tied by the simple fact of his and Jensen’s particles colliding, regardless of circumstance. There are worlds where Jared does not have a dead sister and worlds where his parents are there through thick and thin. There are worlds where Jared does not hurt like he does in this one, where he is happy, where he is whole.  
  
Best of all, there are worlds where this love—their love—it counts for something after all.  
  
Jared presses closer to Jensen, presses closer to the sunlight he feels on his skin, commits to memory every detail of this moment while he has it. Swears to himself that even if he loses everything, that he will keep this, and not let it go for anything in the world. “So somewhere--not here in this life, but somewhere--we’re together. And we’re happy. And it’s real.”  
  
“And it’s real,” Jensen says back, pressing a lingering kiss to Jared’s forehead, glowing with endless afternoon.  
  
\--  
  
“Gen,” Chad whispers in the dark.  
  
“What?” She snaps up from another doze session. “Is it Jensen? Is he crashing?”  
  
“He’s fine.” Chad’s voice is pitched low, almost smoky in the effort to keep her soothed. She appreciates it more than he should.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“What do we do if he doesn’t wake up?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she answers earnestly, watching the glow of the mind monitors, now a soft pale yellow, like summer. “I really don’t know.  
\--  
  
They’re able to linger a little longer in that golden solace of Jensen’s bedroom, but not too long after the rains come rushing in, the sunlight disintegrates, the memory tumbles into darkness, and they leave together, letting another piece of Jensen fall away to the cold.  
  
Jensen takes Jared’s hand and says “C’mon, let’s go.” Jared does, without hesitation.  
  
They run through more classrooms, restaurants where Jensen used to eat, the aviary, but all too soon the rain comes in, sucks away the heat and the color, blurs the shapes and shuts off the lights. The darkness crawls towards them, as Jensen’s mind slowly turns numb and barren. Jared sticks close to him, grasps his hand and doesn’t dare to let go, but he can see it written all over Jensen’s face, even as he keeps muttering ”C’mon, keep going, one more, one more, we’ll be safe.” The cold is taking over, and they are running out of warm places to hide.  
  
He knows they’re fucked when they stumble out onto the rooftop of his apartment building again, because this isn’t stable enough to be a concrete memory. It’s a phantom memory at best. Jensen knows it too, bites his lip as they pace around the rooftop, eyes darting to the clouds gathering darkly in the sky.  
  
“Think of another memory,” Jared urges, glancing at the clouds too, the rumbling thunder that comes with them. “We have to go, we have to—“  
  
“Jared.” Jensen doesn’t move. The clouds thicken overhead.  
  
“No,” Jared shakes his head, “Don’t give up like that. We can fight this, we just have to keep going.”  
  
“Go where? I’m not strong enough to make it out of here and you know it. My mind can no longer distinguish my own memories from ours, my identity, my past, is intertwined with yours. It doesn’t matter whether you stay or go, my mind still won’t service my body long enough to live. It doesn’t understand that this isn’t real life.”  
  
What is a person without their memories, their life experiences influencing their choices, driving them forwards? Everything a person does is influenced by things that have already happened. Jensen without his memories isn’t someone Jared would even recognize, not that Jensen would live long enough for Jared to even try.  
  
“What are you saying?” Jared doesn’t want to hear these words. But he has to. Maybe that’s the worst part of it. Not that these things are happening, but that he has to know they are, full disclosure.  
  
“I’m saying my mind refuses to recognize a life that you are not part of, because you occupy so many of my thoughts, so many pieces of myself.” Jensen speaks in his same measured tone, like he’s explaining a simple diagnosis to him, breaking it down in simple terms so Jared can understand, so Jensen can dissociate.  
  
“But it’s not real,” Jared says desperately, gripping Jensen’s hand like a vice, “I’m not real to you. None of it’s real.”  
  
This is a lie of course, and Jensen smiles humorlessly, calling him on it, “You and I both know that doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel it, regardless.”  
  
“I wish I had never met you.” Jared says it without bitterness. “I wish you had never walked into my mind. I wish I had made you up inside my head.”  
  
Jensen frowns. “You’d still be in a coma.”  
  
“But you wouldn’t be,” Jared responds.  
  
Around them, in soft patters, the rain begins to fall.  
  
“What happens if you untie the thread?”  
  
Jensen raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”  
  
“When you went to Lisa, you panicked; you ripped the threads right off, cauterizing and severing the emotional connection. But what happens if you remove the thread entirely, let it go?”  
  
Jensen frowns again, considering. “I suppose you would remove yourself from the memory completely, wherein you’d literally cease to exist in the memory, so that anyone who shared the memory with you would also lose your presence. You wouldn’t be severing anything, you’d just simply be subtracting yourself from the equation, and the memory of you would essentially disappear…” he trails off, staring at Jared, and Jared knows the exact moment when the thought slips into place because his eyes widen and he shakes his head, vigorously, “Absolutely not. No way, don’t even think about it.”  
  
“Jensen—“  
  
“No, fuck that Jared, I’m not going to just let you do that to yourself—“  
  
“But what if I did?” Jared pulls away where Jensen is reaching for him, crossing his arms over his chest, obstinate and self-righteous as all get out. “What if I give back all my memories of you, or rather, erase myself from yours? Will that make you stronger? Would it be enough for you to make it out? Don’t lie to me.”  
  
Jensen glares at the roof beneath their feet for a long moment. “Even if it was enough, I can’t ask you to that. I won’t.”  
  
“You don’t have to ask,” Jared retaliates. “If it saves you? I’ll do it voluntarily. You saved me. Let me save you back, just this once.”  
  
“We don’t know that that would be enough to get me out of here. We don’t. I still might not have a reason to live- I severed my Call. I still have no emotional tie to humanity, a reason to fight for my life.”  
  
“Then we’ll find a reason together. Besides, if we got me, the absolute basket-case, to find a reason to live, then there’s got to be a reason for you.”  
  
“What made you wake up?” Jensen asks suspiciously.  
  
“That’s easy,” Jared answers, “I thought you’d be there when I did.”  
  
Jensen makes a wounded noise of guilt, and maybe Jared’s being manipulative for using it against him, but he’s got one shot to fix this. There’s no time to waste.  
  
They lock eyes for a long moment in a silent argument, Jensen’s protest and Jared’s insistence bouncing off the inside of their skulls in a headache, but in the end Jensen shakes his head with a sigh, running a hand over his face, shaky and tired.  
  
“Fine, Jared. Fine.”  
  
The first thing Jared does is step back, because he’s so relieved and grateful to have this chance to save him, but he also knows that he can’t be near Jensen when he does it, or he’ll surely fall apart. This is going to be hard enough as it is. The rain is coming on stronger, the pink sky of sunset and the twitter of birds beginning to fade away, but he barely notices.  
  
“Okay,” Jared breathes, “Talk me through it. What do I do?”  
  
“Picture the thread around your wrist, picture every single moment that ties us together, me to you.” Jensen’s tone doesn’t sound too willing, but he doesn’t try to talk to Jared out of this. Like he knows if he doesn’t help, Jared will go right ahead and do it himself just the same. “The threads appear as you want them to be. If you want them to be removable, they will be.”  
  
Jared closes his eyes, pictures thread wrapped around his wrists, just like in Jensen’s memories of Lisa, imagining all the ways he and Jensen are drawn to each other, all the ways in which they come together. Threads with knots, threads that can be untied, let go.  
  
There. He looks down, and sure enough, his left wrist is covered in them, thin threads, lighter than a feather, wrapped neatly about his wrist in rows upon rows. Each thread loops off his wrist and stretches across the space to twine around Jensen’s wrist, several yards away. In Lisa’s mind, the threads were shades of blue and green, earthy browns and blushing pinks. But here, around Jared’s wrist, they are only red.  
  
Jared bites back a smile.  
  
“Well,” he looks up at Jensen, heart in his throat, “Here goes nothing.”  
  
Thunder rolls in, and Jared selects the first thread, running his fingers down to its origin. A shiver passes through him at the contact, and he knows without looking that Jensen can feel it too. It’s just a thought, he tells himself. It’s just a tiny thought in a thin string, tied in a loose knot about Jared’s wrist. A thought that tastes like coffee, smells like Sunday mornings in his kitchen, the two of them bickering over the Lucky Charms, Jared eating only the marshmallows, Jensen finishing off the rest for him. It’s just a Sunday morning, Jared thinks, it won’t hurt too much to let go of this.  
  
But when he goes to lift it, it feels a thousand pounds heavy. But when he goes to tug at the string and loosen the knot, it feels like a bullet punching into his stomach. It hurts so bad he almost falls to his knees and lets go, but he keeps tugging tugging tugging until the knot pulls loose. The second it does, his muscles unlock and relax and Jared gasps, letting oxygen rush into his lungs. He lets the string fall from his fingers and it dissipates like a dynamite fuse, falling away from Jensen’s wrist into nothingness.  
  
He looks up to find Jensen pale and shaking, sweat gathering on his hairline. Jared laughs through the ache of the loss. It had only been a Sunday morning.  
  
“One down.” Jared jokes weakly, doesn’t give himself another second to talk himself out of it before he’s grabbing another memory—the time Jensen visited Megan’s grave with him—and pulling it loose.  
  
After years of self-hatred and self-harm, Jared had thought he’d had a pretty solid grasp on pain. It was mostly relative, you could distract yourself enough from the surface aspect of it, get to the bottom of all of it, free yourself from the synaptic response your brain gives off to hurting, being hurt. But this is inescapable, this pain, digging into the center of him, removing literal parts of him. When you get an appendix, or a spleen removed, they give you anesthesia, knock you out cold. This is like that, except Jared’s the surgeon as well as the patient, and they’re all out of painkillers.  
  
He starts to crack up on the seventh thread, hissing through his teeth in pain, high off of it.  
  
“You’re going to kill us both,” Jensen gasps, looking winded despite the fact that he’s standing completely still.  
  
“I’m going to save us both,” Jared groans, untying Jensen at his sixteenth birthday, the burnt cake Jared had made, swearing it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.  
  
“Jared…”  
  
“Don’t,” he warns, already tugging at his graduation party, Jensen drunk and grinning next to him.  
  
After what feels like days spent untying red thread after red thread, the pain eventually becomes something too tangible to bear without distraction, so he looks at Jensen. “Tell me what to do after the threads are gone. I’ve got an inkling everything’s going to start really falling to shit once I’m done.”  
  
“The roof will collapse, in fact, it’s likely all the memories will collapse. It is your job to run to the outskirts of the maze,” Jensen exhales, struggling to keep his tone even and calm, “Use your Calling, and run, run no matter what. And when you use your Call, you will not think of me. You will immerse yourself in that singular memory that will bring you out, and you’ll let the rest of it, the rest of me, go. You’re going to want to stay, because it’s going to light up like goddamn fireworks, and my mind is going to want you back. But you can’t stop. You’ve got to accept that this isn’t real. No matter how much we wish it is.”  
  
“And when we wake up?”  
  
“We’ll be strangers.” Jensen says. “Two people who have never met.”  
  
“But you’ll live.” Jared removes the second to last thread, ignores the way it scrapes at his soul. “We won’t remember each other, but you will live.”  
  
“In theory,” Jensen nods.  
  
“Then it’s worth it.” He lets the string fall.  
  
“Yes. All I need is a new Call, a new reason to wake up in the outside world, and we’ll be on our way, so to speak.”  
  
Jared lifts the final string from around his wrist, slips his hand through the loop, and it’s somehow the lightest of all to lift. He walks slowly towards Jensen, lifts his hand, tugging Jensen’s with the taut string until they stand a barely a food apart. The thread, silk and crimson, feels unbelievably light and insignificant between his fingertips, but Jared knows what it’s the most important memory of all, maybe the only important memory in this world, real or not real though it may be.  
  
“See this?” Jared lifts the thread to eye level. “It’s not my favorite memory of us, and it certainly isn’t the most definitive one, but it is the most important.”  
  
Jensen eyes soften, but Jared can’t, won’t let him protest. “This is the memory where we sit on the edge of a rooftop, and you give me a reason to wake up. You told me there was life that went on as long as I fought for it, and I believed you. I believed you, and I woke up.” He turns the string between his fingers.  
  
“This is who you are, not any of the other stuff that’s happened to you, not your mistakes. You save lives, you saved mine. That’s what you did for me, Jensen. And now I’m here, doing the same for you.”  
  
He loops the string in a simple knot around Jensen’s wrist, removing himself from the memory, factoring himself out of the equation, but leaving behind the sentiment, the protectiveness, the sudden inspired want to live. It’s a gamble, but Jared knows it will be enough. The will to help people, that kindness is ingrained bone deep in Jensen. All he needs is to be reminded of it, and he’ll find his way out.  
  
They stare at each other for a long beat. Jensen gathers Jared’s bare wrists in him hands, thumb brushing over the bone of his wrist. His one string brushes against Jared’s skin, and the entire center of gravity feels shifted, orbiting about that singular memory, the one thing they have outside of this moment. He knows the second he lets go, it’ll all go rushing away, so he languishes these sparse few seconds. They won’t be around for much longer. His heart hurts with wanting Jensen, with knowing he’s going to wake up once more feeling like something vital is missing, with no explanation why.  
  
The fact of the matter is that Jared may never want Jensen or have Jensen in the same way he has him this moment. He can’t imagine knowing anything else. But now he has to try.  
  
“Promise me you’ll be there when I wake up this time,” Jared whispers.  
  
“You should know by now my promises are for shit,” Jensen says reluctantly.  
  
“Promise me.” Jared insists, squeezing Jensen’s wrist tighter, feeling that lone thread anchor him down. “This time, you’ll be there. If you remember nothing, at least remember to be there. Be here. Wait for me. Because I’m pretty sure I’ll want you whether I remember you or not.”  
  
Jensen’s heart slams in Jared’s chest, and the feeling encased in that beat shatters into infinitesimal warm shards that bury and clog in his arteries, the most bittersweet heart attack.  
  
“Are you sure you would even want the real me? I--I’m not perfect Jared,” Jensen drags a hand over his face, looking like he’d prefer to do nothing other than sleep, even though it’s long past time that he woke up. “I’ve got problems, as you know.”  
  
Jared’s lips quirk. “Guess that makes two of us. We’ve already got so much in common.”  
  
“I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t walk.”  
  
“Excellent. Now I know there’s no chance of you ever being taller than me.”  
  
Jensen huffs, but even then it’s strained. And suddenly, Jared feels very shy, urgent, needy. They’ve run out of time, and even in the space eating itself up around them, Jared scrambles to find more seconds, minutes that he can crawl back in to Jensen, live in his memories, his mind, his heart.  
  
“Before I go though, you know, in case I wake up and you decide you’re not...like...in love with me--”  
  
“What are you--”  
  
“Just,” Jared leans in like another thread is pulling forward, “Before I go--”  
  
As he’s read Jared’s mind, Jensen grabs Jared’s face and brushes their mouths together, gentle at first, and then not very gentle at all. One hand fists in Jared’s hair while another pulls him even closer, until he’s bending over Jensen, kissing Jensen like the world is ending, because, well, it is.  
  
Jared has loved him Jensen his entire life. But that fact is not his to keep.  
  
“Gotta run.” Jared grins, and although Jensen laughs breathlessly against his lips his fingers curl further into his hair, knotting as if to keep him from leaving.  
  
“Think of all the reasons you’ve got to live,” Jared says, pressing his lips to Jensen’s in a repetition that feels a language only they understand, “Think of all the lives you are going to save. And when you’re done thinking of all that: think of me.”  
  
And then he’s off, letting go of their last remaining memory and racing away from Jensen, turning corners and dashing out of the maze.  
  
Jared runs and Jared lets go, feels the pain and the hurt rush at him with the honest realization that Jensen was never really there, more a figment of his imagination than a physical force in his life.  
  
It is more or less a fact that Jensen is not going to be there to help him when Jared wakes up. Jared will need to fight for himself, fight to put together all these fragments he finds himself in.  
  
Jared has to believe he’s strong enough to withstand that. He’ll never be able to make that final leap if he doesn’t.  
  
Think of me. He prays into the walls of memories, the places where he wants to belong, one day, some day. Think of me think of me think of me.  
  
He can feel the bits and shards of Jensen flecking off him like paint, spattering the cellophane of the walls. Dark walls appear closer and the maze seems to loom over him but he presses forward, thinking of the only memory that’s going to bring him out.  
  
Jared supposes that  _Champagne Supernova_  isn’t exactly a memory that belongs to him, but the first time he heard that song in his head after waking up in the hospital room, looking for Jensen. It was the first time he had felt, even for a moment that everything was going to be alright. He can’t keep Jensen, but he can keep the feeling this song invokes in him.  
  
Because that was something to fight for, to live for. There was hope in that pipe dream, that even amongst rubble could raise something good.  
  
He wants to be there for that, he wants to wake up and feel that hope. Because at the end of the day. Jared is going to wake, and he is still going to want to kill himself. Jared’s going to wake up and still have a dead baby sister and divorced parents and a brother who won’t see him. He’ll still have no job, and a crap apartment, and no delights beyond sunsets with the birds and Polaroid photographs when the lighting is semi decent. Jared will still need to go to therapy, sort through all of his mess.  
  
That’ll all still be there, like Jared had never even tried to leave it.  
  
But now he’d have the hope, in the sound of some corny, enigmatic 90s alternative ballad. The notion that if he wakes up, when he wakes up, there might someday be someone to share this song with.  
  
Someone to love Jared and all his fucked up broken parts.  
  
Because maybe, just maybe Jared didn’t have to be whole to fall in love with someone. He didn’t have to have his priorities together, his life fixed. Maybe he could be a little bit broken, a little bit shattered, and still trip his way into someone’s heart just the same.  
Maybe letting someone love you despite all the pieces was half the battle.  
  
He sees the abyss heading towards him and he springs, and sprints, surrendering the image of Jensen’s smile, the color of his freckles, the sound of his voice singing Jared’s favorite song. The way his mouth shapes around Jared’s name. He surrenders it all, flies faster with each lost memory, lighter and lighter until he’s without weight at all. Like he’s almost got wings, soaring over the rooftop he knows not too far away from the hospital.  
  
The end of the labyrinth comes quicker than he expected, but by this point, Champagne Supernova is echoing like an arena, Calling Jared back, the one piece he actually gets to keep.  
  
He hurdles straight into the black, with a second long glance back at Jensen’s mind, at the mess of memory and emotion and love he probably left behind.  
  
And Jensen’s right. It lights up like the fourth of July.


	11. Chapter 11

 

Gen’s had so many cups of coffee, she stopped counting after five. Eyes burning, tongue dry and bitter tasting in her mouth, she stares through the glass of the observation room. They clock reads eight fifteen. The nurses will come looking for Jensen soon enough.  
  
If this doesn’t work…  
  
“It’ll work.” Chad says, taking the words right out of her mouth. He tips his head back, closing his eyes and rubbing at the sockets like that will help. Even his spiky hair seems wilted, a testament to exhaustion that Gen is haunted by. “It has to work.”  
  
“They’ve been in there for twelve hours. We’re going to run out of excuses for why we kidnapped a patient in the middle of the night soon enough.”  
  
“Dr. Ackles wouldn’t have trusted us enough to hire us if he didn’t think we were capable of this. Relax.”  
  
Gen sighs, and it’s less light hearted than she’d hoped. “If we make don’t make it out of this with Jensen intact, I have full permission to murder you in your sleep.”  
  
“Hey, you’re the one who came up with the plan. I’m just along for the ride, princess.”  
  
“Don’t call me princess.”  
  
“Fine, I won’t call you princess, princess. But when all this is over, and Chad is once again right, I get to take you out to dinner in celebration.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure I’d rather be shot than seen in public with you at a non-work related event.” Gen replies crisply.  
  
“One dinner, princess, it’s not gonna hurt you. I promise to pull out all the stops. Hell, I’ll even shower, and wear a clean shirt and everything. And I promise not to hit on you as long as you don’t let me order wine.”  
  
Gen puckers her lips to hold back a laugh and looks at Chad, really looks at him. Twelve hours ago she’d have probably kicked him in the nads for even bringing up such a subject in front of her. But now, he’s looking at her, and despite all the cocky swagger there’s also a boyish light to his eyes that speaks to nerves, to errant hope.  
  
Oh, she realizes. Chad isn’t joking. And just like that, she feels the spark on the flint of a thought, catching flame. A spark, a feeling stirring in her chest, like he’s gone and left a thumbprint on the inside of her ribcage, nestled close to her heart. Close, but not quite.  
  
Gen thinks maybe that it’s been a while since she’s let someone in. She thinks a lot of things. Maybe that’s the problem, all this thinking, all these thoughts. All these thoughts…  
  
She doesn’t rub out the feeling, that spark of thought, but rather lets it linger, leveling Chad with a stare that is as good as a smile in her vocabulary, despite the fact that her lips don’t so much as move from that concentrated frown she’s perfected so well.  
  
And then, from inside the resting hospital room, a drawn out choking sound. Jensen, gagging on the life support breathing tube, eyes wide, arms flailing.  
  
“Shit.” Gen scrambles up out of her chair, nearly tripping and falling to her knees as she sprints for him, but Chad beats her to it, talking Jensen through the tube removal in soothing tones, sliding it out of Jensen’s esophagus with a sickening slurp. He hacks and coughs, and Gen finds herself shoving water into his hand before he’s even asked for it.  
  
There’s a nauseating minute where Jensen gets his bearings, breathes, drinks the water in small sips. Chad props the hospital bed up, darting glances in Gen’s direction. Neither of them speaks. They don’t know what Jensen remembers, they don’t even know if he’s aware of what’s going on in this moment.  
  
“So, uh, what did I miss?” Jensen asks.  
  
Chad and Gen stare at him, incredulous, for a long pause.  
  
Gen snarls like an angry wolf, rounding on him, but Chad surprises them both by beating her to it, flat out glaring at Jensen as he snaps, “Seriously dude? You gave us fucking five days to save your ass in your fucking advance directive, that’s what.”  
  
Jensen blinks, shocked. “Ah,” he says, wincing in apology and nodding in understanding, “Forgot to mention that bit.” His eyes flick over to Gen nervously, where she stands with her arms crossed over her chest, still as a statue.  
  
There’s a beat of peace, and then she then she punches Jensen’s shoulder,  _hard_ , which is probably breaking some hospital protocol about patient-doctor care but she honestly couldn’t give a singular fuck. She’s suddenly so angry with him for scaring him like that.  
  
“Yeah,” Jensen says, rubbing at his shoulder and wincing again, “I probably deserved that.”  
  
“You’re an asshole,” Gen says, and then she’s crying great fat sloppy tears, losing composure for the first time since she opened her eyes in a room not unlike this one, with Jensen sitting where she is.  
  
Chad dismisses himself quietly, and Genevieve curls up right there on the hospital bed, crying all over Jensen’s hospital gown. He settles a hand on her hair, the pressure of his fingers reminding her of when she’d woken up after her coma, feeling young and scared, but safe. Safer than she’s ever been.  
  
They sit like that for a long time.  
  
\--  
  
The aneurysm, according to Gen—who’d debriefed him in a perfectly businesslike manner once she’d wiped her eyes clear—had ruptured in his left temporal lobe, the part of his brain that processes and deals with memory. They’d been able to clip the aneurysm in a craniotomy, cause any significant damage that resulted from the rupture and bleeding. But with as it is with neurosurgery, so much was touch and go. Temporary, or even permanent, amnesia, tended to just be one of the perks of the trade.  
  
He’s just glad he survived, that he can continue doing his work.  
  
He’s not looking forward to meeting with the board for a debriefing, nor a long rigorous mental evaluation. Not because he worries for his sanity, but because they were going to want answers; what happened when he was under, why it was a fucking  _patient_  who saved him, and how that was even possible.  
  
In all honesty, Jensen wishes he knew. But he can’t remember a damn thing.  
  
Jensen would like to know how Jared Padalecki—24, male, suicide attempt—had managed to save his life too.  
  
He remembers nothing of the patient, in fact, any and all memory of the patient’s case is hazy. He remembers going under the first time, Gen and Chad exchanging snarky comments over his head as he closed his eyes. He remembers how tired he felt, remembers going to the aviary before he collapsed and then…nothing.  
  
He’d watched, a little too curious, as Genevieve and Chad removed Jared from the tub, unhooking him from the electrodes and IVs, toweling him down and put dry clothes on him. He watched as they settled Jared on a hospital bed, hooking up to nothing but a heart monitor.  
  
He’d watched, and felt deep in his gut that he was tottering over the precipice of something important. He can’t for the life of him explain the instinct, but the longer he lies in the hospital bed, the more he believes in it.  
  
“Hey,” Gen bumps her hip against his hand on the bed, “Chad and I are going to get something from the cafeteria. Should I send in a nurse to have you transported to a more comfortable room?”  
  
Jensen glances, for the millionth time, in Jared Padalecki’s direction. He looks young, way too young to be in a hospital, and definitely too young to be mind mapping with the bare minimum education. His eyes are closed, face expressionless, but even from here Jensen can detect the flicker of movement beneath his eyelids, the telltale sign of dreams. It doesn’t feel right that someone so young should wake up in the hospital alone. Jensen can’t explain the feeling; he only knows it to be true.  
  
“I—I’d like to stay here, if that’s okay.” Jensen responds, forcing himself to look at Gen.  
  
She shifts on her feet. “Are you sure? It could be a while…”  
  
“That’s alright,” Jensen answers quietly, glancing at the thin white scars on Jared’s upturned wrists, the way the tips of his damp hair are curling against the hospital pillow. “I don’t mind.”  
  
“And do you want anything to eat?” She asks.  
  
A few days ago Jensen would have declined the offer for food and wondered how long he could keep declining out of natural curiosity. So it’s a pleasant surprise when he finds himself saying, “Yeah. A sandwich, please. I’m starving.”  
  
Gen beams at him. “You got it.”  
  
He dozes for a bit after she leaves, but the exhaustion in his body is more welcome than he’s felt in a long while, the kind of sleep that—when he gets home to his bed- he will indulge languorously in. He hasn’t looked forward to sleep in years, another surprise he’s woken up to.  
  
But there’s a distinct beeping that picks up, kicks in to overdrive and Jensen opens his eyes to find the patient awake, eyes wide open with alarm. Jensen’s startled by the colors in them, even from this distance.  
  
Jensen struggles into a sitting position, heart in his throat. The sense of relief overwhelms, so he simply stares at Jared, drinking him in, helpless to do anything but.  
  
The heart rate monitor steadies again and Jared turns over on his side, wincing. “I’m not dead, am I?”  
  
He’s taller than Jensen, even sitting down Jensen can see that, with long legs that unfurl all the way to the end of the hospital bed, toes curling against the cool air of the room.  
  
“No, not dead. You’re in the hospital.” Jensen answers, biting back a laugh, something odd twisting in his chest. “What do you remember?”  
  
He watches realization suddenly dawn on Jared’s face, the open curiosity and sleepy haze dropping off into a guarded expression, solemn. “I jumped off a roof. I tried to kill myself.”  
  
He rolls over on to his back, dragging a hand over his face. “Guess the attempt didn’t go too hot.” He squints one eye open and looks at Jensen suspiciously, “Who are you?”  
  
Jensen leans back on his elbows. “I am a doctor, but not yours. From what they tell me, you’re the one that saved my life.”  
  
“I did?” Jared scratches his head. “Well it just figures that I’d forget something like that. Probably the only cool thing I’ve ever done. I’m Jared, by the way.”  
  
“Jensen.”  
  
“Jensen,” Jared repeats, chewing the word, “That’s a funny name.”  
  
Jensen’s heart slams in his chest, the warmest sense of déjà vu prickling at the back of his neck. He feels like he’s about to jump into something headfirst, something terrifying and exhilarating and real, all tied down to the way that Jared is looking at him.  
  
They stare at one another for a moment that feels far too long to be anything but intimate, odd between strangers. Feeling inexplicably shy, Jensen looks down at his wrists. Not his hands, but his wrists, turning them over gently as if he’s looking for something other than the hospital bracelet.  
  
Perhaps a lost watch. He’ll have to check with Gen and ask if he wore a watch.  
  
He stares at Jared again without meaning to, and this time when Jared catches him he doesn’t glance away. Something pulls in his gut, like someone went and wrapped a string around his insides, and it’s the only thing that’s holding him up.  
  
“What?” Jared asks, alarmed.  
  
Now would be the moment to backtrack, the moment to put his emotions back under lock and key, unstitch his heart from where it feels sewn to his sleeve.  
  
The string tugs again, and this split second decision is every kind of ridiculous. People don’t say things like this to total strangers. Yet the compulsion persists, and somehow, Jensen can’t find it in him to care how ridiculous it probably is.  
  
"This is gonna sound crazy," Jensen says, lips pulling upwards into a small smile. He feels his own expression resonate straight through him, the memory of it cementing as permanent, tucked right into the safest part of his mind. "But I think that I've been waiting for you."  
  
A blank faced stare is what he gets in response, spiking panic in his thoughts. In the silence of the space between them, Jensen almost tries to take back the words, but the string in his gut pulls him forward, asks him for patience, asks him to stay.  
  
Then a sigh, a release of bated breath, and across the room on a hospital bed, Jared Padalecki starts to smile.  
  
  


\--

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> dimpleforyourthoughts: [tumblr](http://dimpleforyourthoughts.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/dimpled_trash)  
> / [ko-fi account](http://ko-fi.com/A33648QC)  
> 


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